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With Fire and Sword 



BY 

MAJOR S. H. M. BYERS 

OF GENERAL SHERMAN'S STAFF 

Author of "Sherman's March to the Sea," "Iowa 

in War Times," "Twenty Years in 

Europe,'' and of other books 




NEW YORK 

THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY 

1911 






Copyright, 1911, by 
THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY 



/x " (Tf 6 



©ci.a:jo;j555 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

CHAPTER I 11 

My enlistment in the Union Army — The "Bush- 
whackers" of Missouri — The Quantrells and the 
James Brothers — Cutting a man's head off — My 
first adventure in the war — Capturing a geurrilla. 

CHAPTER II 22 

We leave Missouri and go South — The prisoners of 
Donelson — The taking of New Madrid — "Kindly 
bury this unfortunate officer" — Quaker guns at 
Shiloh — The killing of the colonel. 

CHAPTER III 29 

luka, the fiercest battle of the war, 217 men out of 
482 of my regiment are shot — The awful rebel 
charge at Corinth — Moonlight on the battlefield — 
Bushels of arms and legs — Tombstones for fire- 
places—One of Grant's mistakes. 

CHAPTER IV 40 

An unlucky campaign led by General Grant — Holly 
Springs burned up — The first foragers — Some mod- 
ern Falstaffs — Counting dead men. 



6 CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAPTER V 49 

The laughable campaign of the war — An army float- 
ing among the tree tops of the Yazoo Pass. 

CHAPTER VI 54 

Grant's new plan at Vicksburg — Running the Vicks- 
burg batteries — An hour and a half of horror — The 
batteries are passed — The most important event 
in the war, 

CHAPTER VII 63 

Crossing the Mississippi on gunboats and steamers — 
Battle of Port Gibson — How General Grant looked 
to a private soldier — A boy from Mississippi — Fights 
at Raymond — Battle of Jackson in a thunderstorm 
— Digging his brothers' grave — Grant in battle — 
Saving a flag — How men feel in battle — An awful 
spectacle — The critical moment of General Grant's 
life — A battlefield letter from him to Sherman. 



CHAPTER VIII 87 

Assaults on the walls of Vicksburg — Logan in battle — 
An army mule — A promotion under the guns of 
Vicksburg — A storm of iron hail at Vicksburg — 
The Vicksburg clock — The town surrenders — The 
glad news — Reading my first order to the regiment 
— My regiment put on guard in the captured city — 
Eight days' furlough in four years of war. 



CONTENTS 7 

PAGE 

CHAPTER IX 102 

Sherman's army floats across the Tennessee River at 
midnight — ^Washington at the Delaware nothing 
compared to this — We assault Missionary Ridge — 
An awful battle — My capture, 

CHAPTER X Ill 

In Libby Prison — Life there — "Belle Isle" — All prisons 
bad — The great escape — "Maryland, My Maryland." 

CHAPTER XI 119 

Escaping from Macon — An adventure in Atlanta — 
In the disguise of a Confederate soldier — My wan- 
derings inside the Confederate army and what I 
experienced there — I am captured as a spy — How 
I got out of it all. 

CHAPTER Xil 137 

Under fire of our own guns at Charleston— Trying to 
capture a railway train — The secret band — Be- 
trayed — The desolation of Charleston. 

CHAPTER XIII 144 

Living in a grave — An adventure in the woods of 
South Carolina — Life in the asylum yard at the 
capital of South Carolina — The song of "Sherman's 
March to the Sea" — How it came to be written — 
Pinal escape — The burning up of South Carolina's 
capitol. 



8 CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAPTER XIV 174 

The army in the Carolinas — General Sherman sends 
for me — Gives me a place on his staff — Experiences 
at army headquarters — Sherman's life on the march 
— Music at headquarters — Logan's violin — The Gen- 
eral's false friend — The army wades, swims, and 
fights through the Carolinas — I am sent as de- 
spatch bearer to General Grant — A strange ride 
down the Cape Fear River in the night — General 
Terry — Learn that my song "The March to the 
Sea" is sung through the North, and has given the 
campaign its name — I bring the first news of Sher- 
man's success to the North — An interview with 
General Grant. 

CHAPTER XV 198 

Washington City in the last three days of the war — 
Look, the President! — The last man of the regiment. 



PREFACE 

In war some persons seek adventures ; others have 
them in spite of themselves. It happened that the 
writer of tliis hook belonged to a regiment that 
seemed t6 be always in the midst of great experiences. 
It was, in fact, one of the few regiments that abso- 
lutely fought themselves out of existence. It was 
mustered in a thousand strong ; it lost seven hundred 
and seventy-seven men by death, wounds, and dis- 
ease. The fragment that was left over was trans- 
ferred to a cavalry command. When the writer 
finally escaped from prison, after many months of 
confinement and many thrilling adventures both in 
prison and in the army of the enemy, he was mus- 
tered out as a ''supernumerary officer." His command 
had ceased to exist. He was literally the last man of 
the regiment. Of the eighty of his regiment who 
had been taken to prison with him all but sixteen 
were dead. Of the nine captured from his own com- 
pany all were dead but one. 

While with his command he had served as a 
private soldier, as sergeant, and as adjutant. On 



10 PEEFACE 

escaping from prison he was for a time on General 
Sherman's staff and was selected to run down the 
Cape Fear River and carry the great news of Sher- 
man's successes to the people of the ^North. 

He kept a diary every day in the four years of 
war and adventure. The substance of the facts re- 
lated here is from its pages ; occasionally they are 
copied just as they are there set down. The hook 
is not a history of great army movements, it is simply 
a true tale of the thrilling experiences of a sub- 
ordinate soldier in the midst of great events. 



With Fire and Sword 



CHAPTER I 



My enlistment in the Union Army — The "Bushwhackers" 
of Missouri — The Quantrells and the James Brothers — 
Cutting a man's head off — My first adventure in the 
war — Capturing a guerrilla. 

I am wi'iting down these sketches of adventures 
of mine from a daily journal or diary kept by me 
throughout the four years of the Civil War. Its 
pages are crumpled and old and yellow, but I can 
read them still. 

Fate so arranged it that I was the very first one 
to enlist in my regiment, and it all came about 
through a confusion of names. A patriotic mass- 
meeting was held in the court-house of the village 
where I lived. Everybody was there, and every- 
body w^as excited, for the w^ar tocsin was sounding 
all over the country. A new regiment had been 
ordered by the governor, and no town was so quick 
in responding to the call as the village of Newton. 
We would be the very first. Drums were beating at 
the mass-meeting, fifes screaming, people shouting. 
There was a little pause in the patriotic noise, and 



12 WITH FIKE AND SWOED 

then someone called out, "Myers to the platform !'' 
"Myers ! Myers ! Myers !" echoed a hundred other 
voices. Mr. Myers never stirred, as he was no public 
speaker. I sat beside him near the aisle. Again the 
voices shouted "Myers ! Myers !" Myers turned to 
me, laughed, and said, "They are calling you, Byers," 
and fairly pushed me out into the aisle. A handful 
of the audience seeing Myers would not respond, did 
then call my own name, and both names w^ere cried 
together. Some of the audience becoming confused 
called loudly for me. "Go on," said Myers, half- 
rising and pushing me toward the platform. 

I was young, — just twenty-two, — ambitious, had 
just been admitted to the bar, and now was all on 
fire with the newly awakened patriotism. I went up 
to the platform and stood by the big drum. The 
American flag, the flag that had been fired on by the 
South, was hanging above my head. In a few min- 
utes I was full of the mental champagne that comes 
from a cheering multitude. I was burning with 
excitement, with patriotism, enthusiasm, pride, and 
my enthusiasm lent power to the words I uttered. I 
don^t know why nor how, but I was moving my 
audience. The war was not begun to put down 
slavery, but what in the beginning had been an inci- 
dent I felt in the end would become a cause. 

The year before T had been for many months on 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 13 

a plantation in Mississippi, and there with my own 
eves had seen the horrors of slavery. I had seen 
human beings flogged ; men and women bleeding 
from an overseer's lash. Now in my excitement I 
pictured it all. I recalled everything. "And the 
war, they tell ns," I cried, "is to perpetuate this 
curse !" In ten minutes after my stormy words one 
hundred youths and men, myself the first, had 
stepped up to the paper lying on the big drum and 
had put down our names for the war. 

We all mustered on the village green. Alas, not 
half of them ^vere ever to see that village green again ! 
No foreboding came to me, the enthusiastic youth 
about to be a soldier, of the "dangers by flood and 
field," the adventures, the thrilling scenes, the battles, 
the prisons, the escapes, that were awaiting me. 

Now we were all enthusiasm to be taken quickly 
to the front, to the "seat of war." We could bide 
no delay. Once our men were on the very point of 
mobbing and "egging" our great, good Governor Kirk- 
wood, because for a moment he thought he would be 
compelled to plac€ us in a later regiment. However, 
we were immediately started in wagons for the near- 
est railroad, fifty miles away. 

At the town of Burlington, on the 15th of July, 
1861, we were mustered into the service as Pompany 
B of the Fifth Iowa Infantry. Our colonel, W. H. 



14 WITH FIRE AND SWORD 

Worthington, was a military martinet from some 
soldier school in Kentucky. His sympathies were 
with his native South. Why he was leading a North- 
ern regiment was a constant mystery to his mien. 

The regiment spent scant time in Burlington, for 
in a little while we were whisked down the Missis- 
sippi River in a steamer to St. Louis, and soon joined 
the army of Eremont, organizing at Jenerson City 
to march against General Price, who was flying to- 
ward Springfield with th6 booty he had gained in his 
capture of Mulligan and his men at Boonville. Now 
all began to look like war. Missouri was neither 
North nor South ; she was simply hell, for her people 
were cutting one another's throats, and neighboring 
farmers killed each other and burned each other's 
homes. The loyal feared to shut their eyes in sleep ; 
the disloyal did not know if a roof would be above 
their heads in the morning. Brothers of the same 
family were in opposing armies, and the State was 
overrun by Southern guerrillas and murderers. The 
Quantrells, the James Brothers, and other irregular 
and roaming bands of villains rode everywhere, way- 
laying, bushwhacking, and murdering. 

We followed General Price's army to the Ozark 
Mountains, marching day and night — the nights 
made hideous by the burning of homes on the track 
of both the armies, while unburi^d corpses lay at 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 15 

the roadside. We marched half the nights and all 
the days and just as we got close enough to fight, 
the Washington politicians caused Fremont to be re- 
moved from his command. Fremont had been ahead 
of his time. He had freed some slaves, and the 
dough-faced politicians were not yet ready for action 
of that character. 

The campaig-n had been to no purpose. Some of 
our regiment, indignant at the removal of their gen- 
eral, had to be guarded to prevent mutiny and dis- 
order. Xow we turned about and made the long 
march back to the Missouri River. Half that cold 
winter was spent near Syracuse, in guarding the 
Pacific Railway. We lived in wedge tents, and 
spite of the cold and snow and storm, our squads by 
turn tramped, for miles up and down the railroad in 
the darkness every night. What terrible tales, too, 
we had in our little tents that winter, of the deeds 
of Quantrell's men. It did not seem possible that 
the South could set loose a lot of murderers to hang on 
the skirts of our army, to ^'bushwhack" an honorable 
foe, burn villages, destroy farms, and drive whole 
counties into conditions as frightful as war was in 
the Middle Ages. Only savage Indians fought that 
way. Yet Quantrell's band of murderers was said 
to be on the payroll of the Confederate States. Here 
and there, however, his guerrilla outlaws met with aw- 



16 WITH EIRE AND SWORD 

ful punishinent, and horrible incidents became the 
order of the day and night. 

I recall now how a prize was once offered by one 
of our commanders for the head of a certain man 
among those desperate murderers, a desperado with a 
band of men that knew no mercy. His troop of riders 
had ambuscaded almost scores of our soldiers, and 
innocent farmers who did not happen to like his ways 
were strung up to trees as unceremoniously as one 
would drown a kitten. The offered prize of a thou- 
sand dollars stimulated certain of our men in taking 
chances with this beast of the Confederacy, and a 
corporal of our cavalry learned of the desperado's 
occasional visits at night to his home, only a dozen 
miles away from where we were camped. Several 
nights he secretly watched from a thicket near the 
cabin for the bandit's return. Once in the darkness 
he heard a horse's hoofs, and then a man dismounted 
and entered at the door. The evening was chilly, 
and a bright fire in the open fireplace of the cabin 
shone out as the man entered. 

The corporal, who had disguised himself in an old 
gray overcoat, knocked for entrance, and pretended 
to be a sick Confederate going on a furlough to his 
home not far away. He was cautiously admitted 
and given a seat by the open fire. He had no arms, 
and to the bandit and his wife his story of sickness 



WITH FIRE A^B SWOED 17 

and a furlough seemed probable enough. The two 
men and the one woman sat in front of the fireplace 
talking for an hour. The corporal, with the guerrilla 
sitting within a few feet of him, thought of the prize, 
and of his comrades murdered by this man. But 
what could he do? Suddenly the thought came, "I 
must kill or be killed." Outside there was only dark- 
ness and silence; inside the cabin, the low voices of 
these three people and the flickering fire. 

The corporal glanced about him. There was no 
gun to be seen that he could seize. The guerrilla's 
big revolver hung at his belt. While sitting thus, a bit 
of burning wood rolled out onto the hearth. The guer- 
rilla stooped over to put it in its place. Instantly the 
corporal saw his chance and, springing for the iron 
poker at the fireside, dealt the guerrilla a blow on 
the head that stretched him dead on the cabin floor. 
In an instant his big jackknife was out of his pocket 
and in the presence of the screaming wife the brute 
severed the man's head from his body. Then he left 
the cabin, mounted his horse in the thicket, and in 
the darkness carried his ghostly trophy into camp. 
It is a horrible ride to think of, that dozen miles, 
with the bleeding head of a murdered man on the 
saddle bow. 

So the awful things went on all that winter in 
Missouri. As for myself, I was traniping about as 



18 WITH FIRE AND SWOED 

a corporal, lielping iu a siriall way to keep the great 
railroad free from marauders and in possession of 
the Union army. 

I don't know how it happened, but one morning 
our colonel, who had always treated me with extreme 
gruffness, though he well knew I did my duties with 
patriotic zeal, sent for me to come to his tent. I was 
a little alarmed, not knowing what was about to hap- 
pen to me. The colonel called me by name as I 
entered, saluting him cap in hand, and for once he 
actually smiled. 

"Corporal," he said dryly, as if suddenly regret- 
ting his smile, "I have noticed that you always did 
the duty assigned you with promptness. I need a 
quartermaster sergeant. You are the man." 

I was almost paralyzed with astonishment and pleas- 
ure. I stood stock still, without a word of gratitude. 
At last, recovering myself, I explained that I had 
enlisted expecting to fight, and not to fill some easy 
position with the trains. 

"If I could only be allowed to find a substitute," 
I ventured to say, "in case of a fight, so I might 
share the danger with my comrades, I would like the 
promotion." 

Again the colonel tried to smile. "You probably 
will change your mind ; you will find excitement 
enough," he reimarked, dismissing me. 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 19 

I was hardly installed in my new post when to my 
surprise I was ordered by the colonel to take a good 
horse and ride twelve miles across the lone prairies 
and carry a message to a command at the village of 
Tipton. Instantly my mind was excited with the 
hopes of an adventure. I don't know, even now, just 
why I was selected for the venturesome undertaking. 
I knew there was scarcely a road and not a house in 
^he whole distance. I knew, too, the whole country 
was full of murderous guerrillas. But nevertheless 1 
was full of elation. This was the kind of a thing I 
had hoped for when I enlisted. 

Light flakes of snow were falling when, with 
exultant spirits, I started from the camp. The trip 
outward proved uneventful, for nothing happened 
to me on my way. As I was returning, however, at 
a point halfway across the prairie I was surprised 
to see a man in gray, probably a guerrilla, ride out 
of a long slough or hollow to my left and gallop into 
the road directly ahead of me. He was in complete 
gray uniform, wore a saber, and had revolvers at 
his saddle bow. The man glanced back at me, and 
I saw him reaching for his pistols. "Here comes 
my first fight in the war,'' I thought instantly, "out 
here alone on the prairie." Save my one half- 
loaded revolver, strapped to my waist, I was un- 
armed. The stranger, without firing, galloped faster. 



20 WITH FIRE AND SWORD 

I, too, galloped faster, the distance between us re- 
maining abont the same. Each of us now had a 
pistol in his hand, but it looked as if each were 
afraid to commence the duel. If the stranger 
checked his horse to give him breath, I checked mine. 
If he galloped again, I, too, put spurs to my ani- 
mal. Imagining that other guerrillas must be lurk- 
ing quite near, I was not over-anxious to bring on the 
engagement, and I suppose the armed man felt much 
the same way, for he could not have thought that I 
was in such a place absolutely alone. So neither 
fired. We just looked at each other and galloped. 
Finally we approached a little wood, and in a 
twinkling he turned into a path and was out of 
sight. I did not care to follow him to his hiding- 
place just then, and quickly galloped to our camp a 
few miles off. 

Before midnight that night I, with a dozen of 
my regiment, surrounded the little wood and a cabin 
secreted in its center. Approaching, we looked into 
the windows, and, sure enough, there, roasting his 
feet in front of an open fire, sat my rider of the 
day. When three of us suddenly entered the house 
and demanded his surrender he sprang for a rifle that 
stood like a poker by the fireside, aimed it at me, 
and shouted "l^ever ! Surrender yourself." A 
bayonet that instant against his breast brought him 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 21 

to terms, however. There followed a little fare- 
well scene between him and his wife, who poured 
bottles of wrath on the heads of the "bluecoats/' and 
our captive — my captive^ — was hurried to the guard- 
house at the camp. It had been a perfectly blood- 
less encounter, but next morning it turned out that T 
had by chance captured one of the most dangerous 
guerrillas in Missouri. 



CHAPTER II 

We leave Missouri and go South — The prisoners of Donel- 
son — The taking of New Madrid — "Kindly bury this 
unfortunate officer" — Quaker guns at Shiloh — The kill- 
ing of the colonel. 

It was a trifling incident, this capture, compared 
witli the dreadful things I have referred to as going 
on in Missouri that memorable first year of the 
Civil War. A great volume would not contain the 
record of them all. The first dead men I saw while 
in the army were eight Missouri farmers murdered 
by guerrillas and left lying in the hot sun and dust 
at the roadside. The sight moved me as no great 
battle ever did afterward. 

One half of the male population of Missouri was 
trying to kill the other half. They were not op- 
ponents from diiferent far^ofi sections fighting, but 
near neighbors, and nothing seemed too awful or too 
cruel for them to do. How I pitied the women and 
children who lived in the State in those awful days ! 

General Sherman's designation of war as "helF' 
found more confirmation in the dreadful raids, out- 

22 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 23 

rages, and murders by QuantrelFs guerrillas in Mis- 
souri than in tbe bloodiest battles of the four years' 
conflict. 

!N'ow for months my regiment, with others, had 
chased up and down, and all over that unhappy old 
State of Missouri, trying to capture and punish 
these bands of murderers. On the old steamboat 
War Eagle, too, we paddled for weeks along the 
"Muddy Missouri" River, landing every here and 
there to have a little brush with guerrillas who had 
fired on our boat from the banks or from secret 
recesses in the woods. It was rare that we could 
catch them or have a real fight. Their kind of war 
meant ambuscades and murder. 

At last an end came to this dreadful guerrilla- 
chasing business in Missouri so far as we were oon* 
cerned, anyway. We were to stop running after 
Price's ubiquitous army too. We were no longer to 
be the victims of ambuscades and night riding mur- 
derers. 

The glad news came to my regiment that we were 
to be transferred to the South, where the real war 
was. 

One morning we left the cold and snow, where we 
had lived and shivered in thin tents all the winter, 
left the thankless duty of patrolling railroads in the 
storm at midnight, and marched in the direction of 



24 WITH FIEE AND SWOED 

St. Louis. A long, cold, miserable march it was too, 
hurrying in the daytime and freezing in our bivouacs 
in the snow and woods at night. Many a man we 
left to sicken and die at some farmhouse by the road- 
side. Our destination was 'New Madrid, where we 
were to be a part of Pope's army in the siege and 
capture of that town. 

As we were about to embark on boats at St. Louis 
we beheld in the snow and storm many steamers 
anchored out in the pitiless waters of the Missis- 
sippi River. These vessels were loaded with shiver- 
ing thousands in gray and brown uniforms, the 
prisoners whom General Grant had captured at the 
battle of Fort Donelson. There were twelve or fif- 
teen thousand of them. Seeing this host of prisoners 
made us feel that at last the Union army had a 
general, although we had scarcely heard of TJ. S. 
Grant before. This army of prisoners taken in battle 
was his introduction to the world. 

Shortly we were before ISTew Madrid, and the siege 
conducted by General Pope commenced. The town 
was defended by strong forts and many cannon, but 
its speedy capture by us helped to open up the Mis- 
sissippi River. It was a new experience to us, to 
hsve cannonballs come rolling right into our camp 
occasionally. Yet few men were injured by them. 
We were in more danger when a fool officer one day 



WITH FIRE AND SWOKD 26 

took our brigade of infantry down through a corn- 
field to assault a gunboat that lay in a creek close by. 

The Rebel commander had expected us, and had 
his grape shot and his hot water hose, and such 
things all ready for us. We went out of that corn- 
field faster than we went in. This was real war, the 
thing my regiment had been so longing for, in placs 
of chasing murderers and guerrillas in Missouri. 

We entered ]^ew Madrid one morning before 
daylight. The enemy had left in awful haste. I 
recall finding a dead Rebel officer, lying on a table 
in his tent, in full uniform. He had been killed by 
one of our shells. A candle burned beside him, and 
his cold hands closed on a pencil note that said, 
^^Kindly bury this unfortunate officer. '' His 
breakfast waited on a table in the tent, showing how 
unexpected was his taking off. 

Our victory was a great one for the nation, and it 
put two stars on the shoulder straps of General Pope. 
It made him, too, commander of the Eastern army. 

A comrade in Company A of my regiment had 
been wounded a few days before and had died in 
the enemy's hands. I now found his grave. At its 
head stood a board with this curious inscription: 
^^This man says he was a private in the Eifth Iowa 
Regiment. He was killed while trying to attend to 
other people's business." 



26 WITH FIRE AND SWOED 

Our command was now hurried to the Shiloh 
battlefield, of course too late to be of any use. But 
we took part in the long, wonderful, and ridiculous 
siege of Corinth, under Halleck, when our great army 
was held back by red tape, martinets, and the fear of 
a lot of wooden guns that sat on top of the enemy's 
breastworks, while that enemy, with all his men, and 
with all his guns, and bag and baggage, was escap- 
ing to the south Our deeds were no credit to any- 
body, though here and there we had a little fight. 

One incident of great importance,' however, hap- 
pened to my regiment here. It was the death of our 
colonel. One night when he was going the rounds 
of the picket lines out in the woods he was shot dead 
by one of our own men. The sentinel who did the 
killing declared that Rebels had been slipping up to 
his post all night, and when he would hail with ^'Who 
goes there ?" they w^ould fire at him and run into the 
darkness. He resolved to stand behind a tree the next 
time and fire without hailing. By some accident 
Colonel Worth ington and his adjutant were ap- 
proaching this sentinel from the direction of the 
enemy. Suddenly the sentinel held his gun around 
the tree and fired. The bullet struck the colonel in 
the forehead, killing him instantly. As he fell from 
his horse the adjutant sprang to the ground and cried, 
"Who shot the officer of the day?" "I fired," ex- 



/ 

WITH FIRE AND SWORD 2Y 

claimed the sentinel, and he then told of his experi- 
ences of the night. He was arrested, tried, and 
acquitted. Yet there were many among ns who be- 
lieved that the colonel had been intentionally mur- 
dered. He was one of the most competent colonels 
in the army, but among his soldiers he was fearftilly 
unpopular. He was, however, a splendid disciplina- 
rian, but this was something the volunteers did not 
want. In their minds the colonel had been only a 
petty tyrant, and not even wholly loyal. With a dif- 
ferent disposition he certainly would have been a dis- 
tinguished soldier. He was one of the most military- 
looking men in the whole army, but friends he had 
none. More than once his life had been threatened 
by soldiers who regarded themselves as having been 
treated badly by him. 

His body was brought into camp the next morning 
and lay in his tent in state. He was given a militar}^ 
funeral, and the horse that was bearing him when he 
was killed was led behind his coffin. 

After his death numbers of the men of the regi- 
ment were indignant, when they found among his 
papers warrants and commissions intended by the gov- 
ernor for them, commissions that had never been de- 
livered. Their promotions had never come about. 
!N'ow they knew why. 

Worthington was succeeded by Colonel 0. L. Mat- 



28 WITH FIRE AND SWOED 

thies, one of the bravest, best, and most loved com- 
manders of our army. Later Mattbies was made a 
general, and at tbe close of the war died of wounds 
received in battle. 

Although I was quartermaster sergeant of the regi- 
ment, I was always careful that this should not keep 
me away from the command when enduring hard 
marches or when engagements were coming on. When 
in camp I kept my rifle in one of the ammunition 
wagons (of several of which I had charge), but 
if the alarm sounded my rifle was on my shoulder 
and I was the private soldier in the ranks of the com- 
pany. I deserved no special credit for this. I was 
only doing my duty. We had muzzle-loading Whit- 
ney rifles and bayonets. The equipment and rations 
we carried in weight would have been a respectable 
load for a mule. 



CHAPTER III 

luka, the fiercest battle of the war, 217 men out of 482 of 
my regiment are shot — The awful Rebel charge at 
Corinth — Moonlight on the battlefield — Bushels of arms 
and legs — Tombstones for fireplaces — One of Grant's 
mistakes. 

All that summer, after taking Corinth, we chased 
up and down the State of Mississippi, trying to get 
fair battle with the Rebel army. At last the chance 
came, and for my regiment it was an awful one — 
the battle of luka. 

The battle of luka took place on the 19th of 
September, 1862. It was fought by a handful of the 
troops of General Rosecrans against half the army 
of General Price. Grant was only a few miles away, 
but although commander-in-chief, he knew nothing of 
the hardest-fought battle of the Civil War until it 
was over. 

One morning before daylight while camped in 
the woods near Jacinto half expecting to be attacked, 
we heard that Price's army was in luka, some eigh- 
teen miles away, and that if we would hurry there 

29 



30 WITH FIRE AND SWORD 

and attack from one side, General Grant, with Ord*a 
troops, would attack from another side. How eagerly 
the regiment made the forward march on that beauti- 
ful autumn day! The woods were in their fairest 
foliage, and it seemed too lovely a day for war and 
bloodshed. The bugles played occasionally as the 
men hurried along, but not a shot was fired. No 
noise like war fell on the soldiers' ears as they 
tramped over the beautiful country road toward the 
Tennessee River. They had time for reflection as 
they marched, and they knew now they were going 
to battle. There had been no time for letters or fare- 
wells, and each thought the other one, not himself, 
moist likely to fall in the coming engagement. 

There were only 482 of my little regiment now 
marching there, hoping, almost praying, the enemy 
might only wait. How little anyone dreamed that 
before the sun set 217 of that little command would 
be stretched dead or dying among the autumn leaves I 

It was just two o'clock when the regiment ran on 
to the army of the enemy, lying in line right across 
the road close to luka. My own regiment was in 
the advance. Instantly it, too, was in line of battle 
across that road, and in a few minutes absolutely the 
fiercest little conflict of the war began. Our brigade 
was fearfully outnumbered. Rosecrans, had ten 
thousand soldiers w^ithin five miles of the battlefield. 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 31 

yet let three or four small regiments and a battery do 
all the fighting. Ten miles away, in another direc- 
tion, lay General Grant and General Ord, with many 
other thousands, as silent as if paralyzed. An un- 
lucky wind blew, they said, and the sound of our 
cannon, that was to have been the signal for them 
to attack also, was unheard by them. 

Charge after charge was made upon our little line, 
and the Eleventh Ohio Battery, which the regiment 
was protecting, was taken and retaken three times. 
There were no breastworks, yet that one little bri- 
gade of Hamilton's division stood there in the open 
and repulsed assault after assault. It was the Iowa, 
the Missouri, and the Ohio boys against the boys of 
Alabama and Mississippi, and the grass and leaves 
were covered with the bodies in blue and gray. Not 
Balaldava, nor the Alma, saw such fighting. It was 
a duel to the death. For hours the blue and the gray 
stood within forty yards of each other and poured 
in sheets of musketry. Every horse of the battery 
at the left of my regiment was killed, and every 
gunner but one or two was shot and lying among the 
debris. 'No battery in the whole four years' war 
lost so many men in so short a time. Antietam, 
Gettysburg, the Wilderness, could show nothing like 
it. Only the setting sun put an end to what was 
part of the time a hand to hand conflict. One dar- 



32 WITH EIKE Al^D SWOED 

ing Rebel was shot down and bayoneted clear be- 
hind the line of Company B, where he had broken 
through to seize the flag of my regiment. 

That night the enemy slipped away, leaving hun- 
dreds and hundreds of his dead and wounded on the 
field. With a few lanterns our men then went about 
and tried to gather up the wounded; the dead were 
left till morning. There were 782 Union men lying 
there in their blood that long night, 608 of them out 
of a single small brigade. While mothers and sis- 
ters at home were praying for the safety of these dear 
ones at the front, their spirits that night were leav- 
ing their torn bodies in the dark and ascending 
heavenward. Five of my eight messmates of the day 
before were shot. It was not a question who was 
dead, or wounded, but who was not. Fifteen officers 
of our little half regiment were dead or wounded. 
The enemy lost more than one thousand men in try- 
ing to destroy that single brigade and its Ohio 
battery. 

The burying party the next morning found nine- 
teen dead Eebels lying together at one place. At 
another spot 182 Rebel corpses lay in a row covered 
by tarpaulins. The enemy had not had time to bury 
them. 

It was a principle among our generals that if a 
command fought well in a battle or got cut all to 



WITH FIRE AiSTD SWORD 33 

pieces, that was tlie particular command to be put 
at the very front in the next hard scrap. And so it 
was that within two weeks my regiment was placed 
outside the breastworks at Corinth, to wait and re- 
ceive another awful assault. 

The night before the battle of Corinth the Fifth 
Iowa Regiment lay across the Purdy road, in the 
bright moonlight. I remained awake all night, talk- 
ing with a comrade who shared my blanket with me. 
Poor Jimmy King! he survived the war only to be 
murdered later on a plantation in Mississippi. As 
we lay there in the wagon road, the awful losses of 
my regiment at luka kept us thinking there in the 
moonlight what would happen on the morrow. When 
morning came the firing opened, and for all that day 
the battle raged fiercely at the left and center left, 
we getting the worst of it, too. The Rebels were 
charging works that they themselves had built when 
they held the town during Halleck's siege. General 
Haccelman and many other of our officers had fallen. 
Our own division, though fighting some, had lost 
but few men. That evening an order came for lis — 
Hamilton's Division — to assault the enemy's left 
flank at midnight. Before the hour came, however, 
the move was decided to be too dangerous, and w*» 
changed our position to one nearer the forts. Al! 
the night we lay there under the brightest moonlight 



34 WITH FIKE AND SWOKD 

I ever saw. Under the same quiet moonliglit, aud 
only six hundred yards away from us, also lay the 
victorious Rebel army. They believed Corinth as 
good as taken, but they had only captured our outer 
lines of forts. Yet it looked very bad for us. Every 
house in town was full of our wounded and our dead 
lay everywhere. 

Once in the night I slipped away from the biv- 
ouac and hurried to the old Tishimingo Hotel, to 
see a lieutenant of my company, who had been shot 
through the breast. Never will I forget the horrible 
scenes of that night. The town seemed full of the 
groans of dying men. In one large room of the 
Tishimingo House surgeons worked all the night, 
cutting off arms and legs. I could not help my 
friend. It was too late, for he was dying. "Go 
back to the regiment,'' he said, smiling, "all will 
be needed." 

It was a relief to me to get back into the moon- 
light and out of the horror, yet out there lay thou- 
sands of others in line, only waiting the daylight to 
be also mangled and torn like these. The moon 
shone so brightly the men in the lines, tired though 
they were, could scarcely sleep. There the thou- 
sands lay, the blue and the gray, under the same 
peaceful moon, worshiping the same God, and each 
praying for dear ones North and South they would 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 35 

never again see. God could not answer the prayers 
of the men in both armies that night. Had He done 
so, all would have been killed on the morrow. At 
early daybreak I again went to see my lieutenant. 
As I entered the building a cannonball from the 
enemy crashed through the house and killed four 
soldiers by the stairway. My friend, with many 
others, was being carried out to die elsewhere. 

It was soon full day. In one of the rooms I saw 
the floors, tables, and chairs covered with amputated 
limbs, some white and some broken and bleeding. 
There were simply bushels of them, and the floor 
was running blood. It was a strange, horrible sight, 
— but it was war. Yes, it was ''hell." I hastened back 
to the lines. Nine o'clock came, and now we knew 
that the great assault was to be made. We looked 
for it against our own division, as we lay in the 
grass waiting. Suddenly we heard something, al- 
most like a distant whirlwind. My regiment rose to 
its feet, fired a few moments at scattering Rebels 
in our front, and were amazed to see a great black 
column, ten thousand strong, moving like a mighty 
storm-cloud out of the woods and attacking the forts 
and troops at our left. Instantly we changed direc- 
tion a little and, without further firing, witnessed 
one of the greatest assaults of any war. It was the 
storming of Fort Robinett. The cloud of Rebels 



36 WITH PIKE AND SWOED 

we had seen divided itself into three columns. These 
recklessly advanced on the forts, climbing over the 
fallen trees and bending their heads against the aw- 
ful storm of grape and canister from all onr cannon. 
A perfect blaze of close range musketry, too, mowed 
them down like grass. Even a foe could feel pity to 
see brave men so cruelly slaughtered. 

When the assault had failed and the noise of battle 
was stilled, I hurried down in front of Kobinett. 
My canteen was full of water and I pressed it to 
the lips of many a dying enemy — enemy no longer. 
Our grape shot had torn whole companies of men to 
pieces. They lay in heaps of dozens, even close up to 
the works. General Rogers, who had led a brigade 
into the hopeless pit, lay on his back, dead, with 
his flag in his hand. He was the fifth one to die 
carrying that flag. When I reached him some cruel 
one had stripped him of his boots. Another had 
taken his fine gold watch. 

In this attack on Corinth the brave Southerners 
lost 5000 w^ounded, and we buried 1423 of their 
dead on the battlefield. Our own loss had been 2200 
dead and wounded. That night I stood guard under 
an oak tree on the battlefield among the unburied 
dead. Many of the wounded, even, had not yet been 
gathered up. The moon shone as brightly as the 
night before, while thousands who had lain there 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 37 

under its peaceful rays before the battle were now 
again sleeping, but never to waken. 

Our regiment now pursued the flying Rebels with 
great vigor. The quantities of broken batteries, 
wagons, tents, knapsacks, guns, etc., strewn along 
the roads behind them were immense. At the 
Hatchie River the Rebels were momentarily headed 
off by a division under Hurlbut that had hurried 
across from Bolivar. A seven hours' battle was 
fought at the bridge, but the Rebels got away in 
another direction. Possibly the best friend I had in 
the world, save my kin, was killed at that bridge. 
It was Lieutenant William Dodd, a classmate in 
school. His head was shot off by a cannonball just 
as his regiment was charging at the bridge. 

The pursuit of the enemy was being pushed with 
vigor when the army was ordered to desist and re- 
turn to camp. It was an astounding order, as it was 
in our power to destroy the defeated and flying 
columns. That order was one of the mistakes of 
Grant's earlier days as a commander. Indeed, we of 
the rank and file had little confidence in Grant in 
those days. We reflected that at Shiloh he was miles 
away from the battlefield at the critical moment. 
Sherman had saved the Union army from destruction 
there. At luka, Grant, though commander, did not 
even know a battle was going on. At Corinth he was 



38 WITH FIRE AND SWORD 

forty miles away, and now, when we had the enemy 
almost within our grasp, he suddenly called us back. 
Rosecrans protested. It was in vain. The order, 
more imperative than before, was repeated. It re- 
quired months, and great events, to make Grant the 
hero of the army which he afterward became. 

This entry I find in my diary in one of those 
days: '^Our commander of the district is General 
U. S. Grant, who took Donelson; but aside from 
that one hour's fighting, and a little fighting at 
Shiloh, the troops know little about him. Rosecrans 
is at present the hero of this army, and, with him 
leading it, the boys would storm Hades." 

With the mercury at one hundred, the dust in the 
roads ankle deep, and the whole atmosphere yellow 
and full of it, the regiments exhausted by the pur- 
suit, and yet disgusted at our recall, slowly tramped 
their way back to Corinth. IN'ow I visited my 
wounded companions in the hospital. On inquiry 
for certain ones I learned that they were dead and 
lying out in the improvised graveyard near by. 

For some reason the dead at Hatchie Bridge were 
not buried. A week after the battle my brother 
rode by there on a cavalry expedition and made the 
horrible discovery that hogs were eating up the bodies 
of our dead heroes. That too was ivar. 

We now camped on the edge of the town and went 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 39 

on building still other and greater forts. Many of the 
soldiers made hnts for themselves. It was getting 
cooler now, and little fireplaces were built in the 
huts and tents. Brick was scarce, and in a few in- 
stances the men used the stone slabs from a grave- 
yard close at hand. It seemed vandalism, but the 
dead did not need them and the living did. 



CHAPTER IV 

An unlucky campaign led by General Grant — Holly Springs 
burned up — The first foragers — Some modern Falstaffs 
— Counting dead men. 

In a month's time, or bj !N*ovember 2, 1862, the 
army, reorganized, onr division led by Quimby, and 
Grant in command of the whole force, started on that 
very first disastrous campaign for the rear of Vicks- 
burg. Grant had some thirty thousand soldiers to 
march with him by way of Grand Junction and 
Holly Springs, and another thirty thousand men, 
under Sherman, he sent down the Mississippi River 
to attack Yicksburg from another direction. We 
marched in mud and wind and rain till nearly 
Christmas, the enemy constantly retreating before 
us. We made a tremendous supply station at Holly 
Springs and left it in charge of a garrison. There 
were supplies there for a hundred thousand men, be- 
sides a million dollars' worth of captured cotton. 

Just as we were confident of overtaking and de- 
stroying the enemy, we were stunned by the tidings 
that a great column of Rebel cavalry had dashed in 

40 



WITH FIKE AND SWOKD 41 

behind our army. With torches and firebrands thej 
had burned Holly Springs to the ground, and had 
destroyed all the army stores. There was not a 
potato or cracker or a pound of bacon left. How I 
remember that dark night when Van Dorn's cavalry 
got behind us in the country lanes of Mississippi! 
I had been started back to a hospital in Holly 
Springs, for my eyes had been inflamed for days. 
Just as my little freight train reached the suburb of 
what had been the town, the rear guard of the enemy 
rode out at the other side. The morning that I 
arrived there was nothing there but smoke, and ashes, 
and ruins, and a smell of coal oil over all. A million 
dollars' worth of our army supplies had been burned 
up in a night. The pretty town, too, was in ashes, 
and Van Horn's bold cavalry swung their sabers in 
the air and rode away laughing. General Grant's 
father and mother, in the town at the time on their 
way to visit their illustrious son with the advance 
of the army, were captured, but politely paroled and 
left among the ruins. 

The loss of the town was a disgrace to the ^North. 
There was a fort there, solidly built of cotton bales 
and occupied by a colonel and a thousand troops. 
The colonel forgot what our ancestors did with cotton 
bales at ISTevv Orleans, and promptly threw up the 
sponge. But then Colonel Murphy was not General 



42 WITH FIEE AND SWOED 

Jackson. Witli the loss of Holly Springs and the 
destruction of our base of supplies there was nothing 
for that whole army of Grant's to do hut to trudge its 
weary way back to Corinth and Memphis, through 
the mud and the wind and the rain. 

The tragical part of that campaign was taking 
place at the same moment down by the Yazoo River, 
right under the guns of Vicksburg. Grant, when he 
marched out of Memphis, had sent Sherman and 
thirty thousand men down the river in steamboats 
to attack Vicksburg from one side while he should 
hurry along with another thirty thousand men and 
pound it from the other side. Sherman and his 
heroes made the awful assaults at Chickasaw bayou 
we read of, never dreaming of the fiasco that had be- 
fallen the main army at Holly Springs. 'Not one 
w^ord of the news ever reached him — and then in 
swamps and bayous his soldiers waded in water half- 
way to their necks and assaulted impregnable hills 
and breastworks. Two thousand men were killed 
or mangled to no purpose. Some of the heroic fight- 
ing of the war was done in that Yazoo slaughter pen, 
and then Sherman and his crippled army withdrew in 
utter failure. 

Vicksburg was safe for awhile. 

My own duty in that unlucky campaign with 
Grant had been to search the country in the neigh- 



WITH FIRE AND SWOED 43 

borhood of our camps and bivouacs for additional 
supplies. Many a time, with a dozen or twenty men 
for guards, and a couple of six-mule teams, we would 
venture miles from camp to confiscate bacon, flour, 
poultry, or whatever else a soldier could eat. On 
my return to the regiment with a wagon full of good 
things, the companies would set up a cheer for tho 
quartermaster sergeant. The colonel always allowed 
me to choose the guards who should accompany me. 
Many a time our little squad got back to camp by 
the skin of their teeth, chased by gaierrillas or some 
wandering band of Rebel cavalry. Our habit was, 
when we found a plantation with something to spare 
on it, to post sentinels in the lanes in every direction, 
while a few of us w^ith the aid of the negroes loaded the 
wagons. If all went well, the procession, followed by 
the slaves we freed and took with us, went back to 
camp in state. Sometimes there was indecorous haste 
in getting home, owing to our sentinel firing his 
gun in warning of near danger. More than one of 
the boys of those venturous excursions, to this day, 
have not yet come back to camp. 

On one of these excursions one day we were sur- 
prised by a little party of rangers, but we took their 
leader captive, and with him a fine Kentucky 
charger and a splendid rifle. The brigade colonel pre- 
sented to me the rifle I mvself had captured, for my 



44 WITH FIKE AND SWOED 

'^bravery," Ii3 said, but the cplendid thoroughbred he 
took for himself. Alas ! this rifle, the testimonial of 
my adventure, was burned up when the Rebel cavalry 
took Holly Springs. I had left it there to send [N'orth 
some day. 

These excursions after food that I have described 
must have been the forerunners of Sherman's great 
forage parties later, on his "march to the sea." It 
was easy enough to feed an army that way, if men 
could be found to take the risk. Sherman's later 
forage parties were so strong that the risk was re- 
duced to fun. 

I copy from my diary here (1862) : 

"Kow the enemy is in front of us. He is on our 
flank and all around us. It is dangerous to venture 
a mile from camp alone. In fact, orders are strict 
for every man and every oflScer to stay close to hia 
regiment day or night. 

"On all the plantations along our way in this cam- 
paign there are signs of war. The cotton gins, the 
fences, the barns, are all gone, — ^burned by raiders 
of both armies, who have scouted through this same 
country time and again. The weather is often 
gloomy; the fenceless fields are brown and naked; 
the big houses left standing on the plantations look 
lone and desolate. There is no song of birds. The 
army wagons, in long trains, and the soldiers in 



WITH riHE AND SWORD 45 

great strung-out coluiQiis of blue, go over the soft 
ground across the fields, along what once was lanes 
and country roads, almost in silence. Here and 
there a skirmish of musketry at some creek crossing 
or at some wood is the only noise heard. This state 
of Mississippi, like the whole South, sees the desola- 
tion of war. But the big, white, lone houses on tho 
deserted lawns, with their low verandas about them, 
are not wholly unoccupied. Though the aiTQS-bearing 
men of the country are every one in the army fight- 
ing US, the women and the children and the slaves 
are still at home. These slaves desert their mis- 
tresses and ccme into the Union camps at night by 
hundreds, bearing their bundles on their heads and 
their pickaninnies under their arms. 

"As Rebel cavalry bands are rioting all around us, 
the strictest orders are given about leaving camp. 
But those who slipped away without leave the often- 
est were themselves officers. Numbers of these went 
off almost nightly, to pay their devoirs to ladies 
whom they happened to admire at neighboring plan- 
tations. These women, glad enough of the compli- 
ments of the Federal officers, let it be very clearly 
understood that they were nevertheless true-blue 
Rebels. Things as to the war were simply glossed 
over in conversation, and both the lady and the of- 
ficer sometimes had a delightful evening, even if 



46 WITH FIRE A:^D SWOED 

the delight on the officer^s part was in violation of 
duty. Sometimes these visits led to ridiculous ter- 
minations. War is not all tragedy." 

Again I copy from the journal of that December: 
"The other night three of the officers of our bri- 
gade, Captain H and Lieutenants D-^^ and 

got themselves into a pretty mess by leaving 

camp to visit at a plantation. The laughable facts 
are these: We had stopped two or three days, to 
mend bridges over the Yocona River. General Grant 
had asked our brigade commander to report the 
names of three officers for promotion. Captain 

H and two lieutenants were selected. Among 

the private soldiers these men were not regarded as 
deserving honor. On the contrary, they were looked 
upon as common braggarts. Some politician at 
home, probably, had moved the wires for their pro- 
motion. As it happened, these three officers were 
the worst offenders of all, as to leaving camp with- 
out orders for the purpose of visiting Rebel ladies 
at neighboring plantations. Some of the staff heard 
of this and determined to unmask them. Some Rebel 
uniforms were secured from prisoners in our hands, 
and one dark night when the captain and his friends 

were away from camp at the home of a Mrs. S^ , 

visiting, a dozen of us in disguise were sent to sur- 
round the house. Instantly there was a cry among 



WITH FIEE AND SWOED 47 

the women of "guerrillas!" "Confederates!" "Con- 
federates !" "Friends !" and a bonny blue Rebel flag 
was waved in the doorway. We were indeed a des- 
perate-looking lot, but the women met the supposed 
Rebel guerrillas almost with embraces. The captain 
and his two lieutenants we pulled from under the 
bed by their heels, and threatened them with instant 
death. The women begged us only not to kill them 
in the house. The officers, on their knees, pleaded 
for their lives. It was agreed that they should sim- 
ply give up their swords, be paroled, and allowed 
to return to camp. At headquarters the next morn- 
ing, in explanation of the loss of their swords, they 
told a wonderful and Falstaffian tale of being over- 
whelmed by Van Dorn's guerrillas the night before, 
and of their miraculous escape to camp. That mo- 
ment they were confronted with their surrendered 
swords and their signatures to their paroles. There 
was a fine collapse at headquarters that morning. 
The names of the three gentlemen were sent to Gen- 
eral Grant the same day, I understand. But not for 
promotion." 

I had a little taste of life in the hospital that 
December. My eyes got worse. For a little time I 
was in a fine private home in Holly Springs, for 
the town, after its burning by Van Dorn, had been 
retaken by us. Every room in the house had its 



48 WITH FIEE AND SWORD 

floors filled with the sick and the dying of both 
armies. Long years after that, while on shipboard 
returning from Europe, I made by chance the ac- 
quaintance of Mrs. Kate Sherwood Bonner, the 
authoress, who as a girl had lived in Holly Springs. 
We talked of the war times, and it transpired that 
the mansion where I had witnessed such distressful 
scenes among the dead and dying was her father's 
home. 

I saw General Grant's father and mother there 
in Holly Springs daily. At the capture of the town 
they had been taken as stated, and released, the 
father on parole. 

I was now sent to Memphis, as I was still in hospi- 
tal. The hospital here was in the old Overton Hotel, 
which was crowded with hundreds of wounded. The 
room used as a dead house was filled every night. It 
was across the court and below my own room. I 
could see the corpses distinctly, as the window was 
left open. It was my habit, a strange one, when I 
awoke in the morning, to look over and count the 
corpses of men who had been carried in there while I 
had been sleeping. It seems now a ghastly business 
enough. 



CHAPTER V 

The laughable campaign of the war — Au army floating 
among the tree tops of the Yazoo Pass. 

In a little time, February, 1863, Grant's army 
was again off to try for Vicksburg. This time it was 
to go on that campaign, so laughable now, but ro- 
mantic always, called the ^^Yazoo Pass expedition." 
We were to go down the Mississippi River in big 
steamers to Helena, and there transfer ourselves on 
to a fleet of little steamers, cut the levee into the 
overflooded country, and try floating a w^hole army a 
hundred miles across the plantations and swamps of 
Mississippi. 

My eyes were well again, and I was happy to join 
our regiment and be one of the aquatic throng. Just 
as we were getting on to the boat at Memphis two of 
my company managed to get shot by the provost 
guard. They had been full of liquor, and refused 
to go to the steamer. They had been heroes at luka. 
How unlucky now to get crippled for life in a 
drunken brawl ! 

49 



50 WITH FIEE AND SWOKD 

On the 22 d of March, near Helena, my regiment 
went aboard the pretty little schooner called the 
Armada. Shortly, dozen of these small boats, crowded 
with regiments, accompanied by gunboats, were float- 
ing about, awaiting the order to sail through a big cut 
that our engineers had made in the river levee and 
get down the pass into Moon Lake. The Mississippi 
was high and raging. All the low-lying country for 
half a hundred miles was flooded till it looked like 
a vast sea, with forests of trees standing in its midst. 
Here and there, too, a plantation, higher than the 
surrounding country, was noticeable. The first pass 
into Moon Lake was but a mile long. But through 
that pass swirled and roared the waters of the Mis- 
sissippi, so suddenly let loose by the break in the 
levee. 

At just four in the evening our little steamer got 
the order to turn out of the river and into the rush- 
ing waters of the pass. We would not have been 
more excited at being told to start over Niagara Falls. 
Our engines are working backward and we enter the 
crevasse slowly, but in five minutes the fearful, eddy- 
ing current seized us, and our boat was whirled 
round and round like a toy skiff in a washtub. We 
all held our breath as the steamer was hurled among 
floating logs and against overhanging trees. In ten 
minutes the rushing torrent had carried us, back- 



WITH FIEE AND SWORD 51 

ward, down into the little lake. I^ot a soul of the 
five hundred on board the boat in this crazy ride was 
lost. Once in the lake we stopped, and with amaze- 
ment watched other boats, crowded with soldiers, also 
drift into the whirl and be swept down the pass. It 
was luck, not management, that half the little army 
was not droAvned. 

'No\Y for days and days our little fleet coursed its 
way toward Vicksburg among the plantations, 
swamps, woods, bayous, cane-brakes, creeks, and 
rivers of that inland sea. Wherever the water 
seemed deepest that was our course, but almost every 
hour projecting stumps and trees had to be sawn 
off under the water to allow our craft to get through. 
Sometimes we advanced only four or ^ve miles a day. 
At night the boat would be tied to some tall syca- 
more. Here and there we landed at some plantation 
that seemed like an island in the flood. The negroes 
on the plantation, amazed at our coming, wondered 
if it was the day of Jubilee or if it was another 
N^oah's flood and that these iron gunboats arks of 
safety. 

We soldiers, if not on duty pushing the boat away 
from trees, had nothing to do but sleep and eat and 
read. Most of the soldiers slept on the decks, on 
the guards, and on the cabin floors. Four of us had 
a little stateroom. I had with me a copy of Shake- 



52 WITH FIKE AND SWOED 

speare, cribbed bj one of the boys somewhere, and 
the Bard of Avon was never studied under stranger 
circumstances. 

The Yazoo Pass, though not so crazy as the cre- 
vasse we had come through, v/as nevertheless bad and 
dangerous. Two of our craft sank to the bottom, 
but the soldiers w^ere saved by getting into trees. 
All the boats were torn half to pieces. One day as 
we pushed our way along the crooked streams amid 
the vine-covered forests we ran onto a Eebel fort 
built on a bit of dry land. In front of it were great 
rafts that completely obstructed our way. An ocean 
steamer was also sunk in the channel in front of us. 
To our amazement we learned that it was the Star 
of the West, the ship that received the first shot fired 
in the war of the Eebellion. That was when it was 
trying to take supplies to Fort Sumter. Our gun- 
boats shelled this ^Tort Greenwood" in vain, and 
now Eebels were gathering around and behind us and 
guerrillas were beginning to fire on the boats. The 
waters, too, might soon subside, and our fleet and 
army be unable to get back into the Mississippi. We 
could not go ahead. Suddenly the orders came to 
turn about and steam as fast as possible to a place of 
safety. 

By April 8 we had made the journey through 
the woods and cane-brake back to the pass. The pic- 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 63 

turesque farce was ended. We could now hunt some 
other road to Vicksburg. We know nothing of what 
the generals thought of this fiasco, but we private 
soldiers had great fun, and the long stay on the boats 
had been a rest from hard campaigning. We had not 
lost a man. A whole campaign and not a soldier 
lost! 



CHAPTER VI 

Grant's new plan at Vicksburg — Running the Vicksburg 
batteries — An hour and a half of horror — The batteries 
are passed — The most important event in the war. 

The attempt on Vicksburg was not to be given up'. 
In the spring of 1863 the whole armj moved down 
the Mississippi to begin one of the most noted cam- 
paigns of history. 

A real sane notion had gotten hold of Grant, and 
of scarcely anyone else. That notion was, if possible, 
to get across the Mississippi below the town (Sher- 
man had failed trying it above) and throw the whole 
army on to the fortifications at the rear. If the 
town's defenders should be bold and come out and 
fight us, so much the better. We wanted that. 

Soon General Grant built long stretches of wagon 
roads and corduroy bridges that ran snakelike for 
forty miles among the black swamps, cane-brakes, 
and lagoons on the west bank of the Mississippi 
River. He then marched half his army down these 
roads to a point below Vicksburg, below Grand Gulf, 
and bivouacked them on the shore of the river. The 
other half, of which my regiment was a part, re- 

54 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 55 

mained near the river above the city. Possibly we 
were twenty-five thousand men there. 

One night these twenty-five thousand bivouacked 
along the levees of the great river were all in great 
excitement. "Coming events were casting their 
shadows before." 

It must have been some great event was about 
to happen that April night of 1863, for the Assis- 
tant Secretary of War was there, and General Grant 
and General Sherman were there, waiting and watch- 
ing in the greatest suspense. What was going to 
happen ? Some one hundred and fifty private soldiers 
were going to perform a deed that should help make 
American history. The success of a whole array 
and the capture of the best fortified city on the Ameri- 
can continent depended on the heroism of this hand- 
ful of private soldiers on this April night, l^o 
wonder the government at Washington sat by the 
telegraph and anxiously awaited every scrap of news 
sent from Grant's army before Vicksburg. He was 
to open the Mississippi River. That very day, al- 
most, the government at Washington sent a letter 
urging General Grant to hurry. "In my opinion," 
telegraphed General Halleck for the President, 'HMs 
is the most important operation of the war. To 
open the Mississippi River would he better than the 
capture of forty Richmonds." 



56 WITH EIRE AND SWORD 

General Grant realized the mighty things he had at 
stake. 

But what availed it to collect his soldiers there ? 
In front of him, in high flood, swept the mightiest 
river on the continent; he had not a boat to cross 
with, and the enemy laughed and dared him from 
the other side. His fleet of steamboats was forty 
miles and more up the river, and between him and 
that fleet were four miles of hostile batteries strong 
enough to blow a fleet to pieces. In fact, every hill, 
hollow, and secret place above and below the city hid 
a dozen cannon. All the way from Vicksburg down 
to Warrentown was a fort. 

What could be done? Without some steamers on 
which to cross, the game was blocked, and Vicksburg, 
strong as Sebastopol itself, might stand there forever 
and the Mississippi River be blockaded to the end of 
the war. Two or three of Grant^s ironclad gimboats 
had run past these awful batteries one night, their 
sides banged to pieces and their iron mail scooped 
up as if it had been made of putty. One of them 
was sunk. But these iron tubs could not serve as 
ferryboats for forty thousand men. Then, the scheme 
was proposed to cover some of the wooden steamboats 
with cotton bales and on a dark night try and rush 
them past the batteries. The boat captains, however, 
would not risk it with their own crews, even had they 



WITH FIRE AND SWOED 57 

as a rule been willing, and so the commands of the 
army asked for volunteers from the private soldiers. 
Desperate as the undertaking seemed, one hundred 
and fifty Union soldiers stepped forward and offered 
to run these steamboats past the guns. The writer 
was one of these volunteers. But too many had of- 
fered to take the risk. The required number w^as 
selected by lot, and the most I could do that historic 
night was to stand on the river levee in the dark 
and watch my comrades perform one of the most 
heroic acts of any war. It was hardly a secret. The 
whole army was excited over the desperate proposal. 
The enemy must have heard of it, and been doubly 
prepared to destroy us. "If Grant's attempt prove 
successful he can destroy the whole Confederate army, 
take Vicksburg, and open the Mississippi Eiver.'^ 
^o wonder the Washington officials sat by the tele- 
graph day and night just then awaiting great news. 

The moon was down by ten o'clock of the night of 
April 16. Under the starlight one hardly saw the 
dark river or the cane-brakes, swamps, and lagoons 
along its border. The whole Northern fleet lay an- 
chored in silence. Grant's army too, down below, 
was silent and waiting. A few miles below us lay 
Vicksburg, dark, sullen, and sleeping. Not a gun 
was being fired. A few lonesome Confederate river 
guards floated above the town in rowboats watching 



58 WITH FIRE AND SWORD 

to give the alarm at the approach of any foe on the 
water. 

Three mysterious looking I^orthern steamboats, 
with crews of volunteer soldiers on board, lay out 
in the middle of the Mississippi Eiver in front of 
Milliken's Bend, a dozen miles above Vicksburg. 
Down in the dark hold of each vessel stand a dozen 
determined men. They have boards, and pressed 
cotton, and piles of gunny sacks beside them there, to 
stop up holes that shall be made pretty soon by the 
cannon of the enemy. They have none of war's 
noise and excitement to keep them up — only its sus- 
pense. They are helpless. If anything happens 
they will go to the bottom of the river without a 
word. Above the decks the pilot-houses are taken off 
and the pliot wheels are down by the bows, and the 
pilot will stand there wholly exposed. Lashed to 
the sides of each of the three little steamers are barged 
piled up with bales of hay and cotton. They look 
like floating breastworks. Anchored still a little fur- 
ther down the stream seven gunboats also wait in 
silence. They will lead these steamboats and try the 
batteries first. The boats must all move two hun- 
dred yards apart. That is the order. 

All is suspense. For a little while the night grows 
darker and more silent ; the moon now is do"wn. The 
thousands of soldiers standing on the levee waiting. 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 59 

and watcliing to see them start, almost bold their 
breath. At the boats there is no noise save the 
gurgling of the water as it grinds past the hulls of 
the anchored vessels. That is all the noise the men 
waiting down in the dimly lighted hulls can hear. 
On a little tug, near by, General Grant, the com- 
mander of the Western armies, waits and listens. 
The Assistant Secretary of War is at his side. In 
a yawl, farther down the stream. General Sherman 
ventures far out on the dark river to watch events. 
All is ready, all is suspense. Just then a lantern on 
the levee is moved slowly up and down. It is the 
signal to start. Down in Yicksburg the unexpectant 
enemy sleeps. Their guards out on the river, too, al- 
most sleep ; all is so safe. Quietly we lift anchors 
and float off with the current. Our wheels are not 
moving. There is a great bend in the river, and as 
we round it the river guard wakened, sends up a 
rocket, other rockets too go up all along the eastern 
or Yicksburg shore. That instant, too, a gun is fired 
from a neighboring bluff. We are discovered. "Put 
on all steam," calls the captain, and our boats move 
swiftly into the maelstrom of sulphur and iron, for 
the enemy opens fire vigorously. The enemy sets 
houses on fire all along the levee to illuminate the 
river, bonfires are lighted everywhere, and suddenly 
the whole night seems but one terrific roar of cannon. 



60 WITH FIEE A^B SWOKD 

The burning houses make the river almost as light 
as day. We see the people in the streets of the town 
running and gesticulating as if all were mad; their 
men at the batteries load and fire and yell as if every 
shot sunk a steamboat. On the west side of the river 
the lagoons and cane-brakes look weird and danger- 
ous. The sky above is black, lighted only by sparks 
from the burning houses. Down on the river it is a 
sheet of flame. One of the steamers and a few of 
the barges have caught fire and are burning up, the 
men escaping in life-boats and by swimming to the 
western shore. The excitement of the moment is 
maddening, the heavy fire appalling, while the 
musketry on the shore barks and bites at the unpro- 
tected pilots on the boats. Ten-inch cannon and 
great columbiads hurl their shot and shell into the 
cotton breastworks of the barges or through the 
rigging of the steamers. The gunboats tremble from 
the impact of shot against their sides, and at times 
the little steamers are caught in the powerful eddies 
of the river and are whirled three times around right 
in front of the hot firing batteries. 

Five "hundred and twenty-five shells and cannon- 
halls are hurled at the hurrying -fleet. The flash of 
the guns, the lisrht of the blazing houses, m_ake the 
night seem n horrible tempest of lightning and 
thunder. Sherman, sitting out there alone in his 



WITH FIKE AND SWORD 61 

jawl on the dark river, has witnessed awful spec- 
tacles, but this is the sight of a lifetime. ^'It was," 
he exclaimed, ''a picture of the terrible not often 
seen." And amid all this roar and thunder and 
lightning and crash of cannonballs above, the men 
down in the holds of the boats — they are the real 
heroes — stand in the dim candle-light waiting, help- 
less, ignorant of events, and in terrible suspense, 
while sounds like the crash of worlds go on above 
their heads. Once some of them climb up to the 
hatchways and look out into the night. One look is 
enough! What a sight! The whole Mississippi 
River seems on fire, the roar of the gunboats an- 
swering the howling cannon on the shore, the terrific 
lightnings from the batteries, the screeching shells 
above the decks. It was as if hell itself were loose that 
night on the Mississippi River. For one hour and 
thirty minutes the brave men stood speechless in the 
holds of the boats while hell's hurricane went on 
above. They lived an age in that hour and a half, 
and yet a thousand of us in Grant's army tried to 
volunteer that v/e, too, might have this awful experi- 
ence. 

Daylight saw the little fleet safe below Yicksburg, 
where thousands of soldiers welcomed it with cheers. 
No such deed had ever been done in the world be- 
fore. Only one boat and some barges were lost, and 



62 WITH FIRE AN^D SWORD 

only a few of the soldiers were hurt. The cotton 
bales had proved a miracle of defense. In a week 
still other steamers, though with greater loss, passed 
the batteries. 

We know the rest. On these same boats Grant's 
army would ferry across the Mississippi, and there 
on the other side fight five battles and win them all. 
Vicksburg will be surrounded and assaulted and 
pounded and its soldiers starved, till, on the nation's 
birthday, thirty thousand of its brave defenders will 
lay down their arms forever. 



CHAPTER VII 

Crossing the Mississippi on gunboats and steamers — 
Battle of Port Gibson — How General Grant looked to 
a private soldier — A boy from Mississippi — Fights at 
Raymond — Battle of Jackson in a thunderstorm — 
Digging his brothers' grave — Grant in battle — Sav- 
ing a flag — How men feel in battle — An awful spectacle 
— The critical moment of General Grant's life — A battle- 
field letter from him to Sherman. 

Now that the boats were below the city, we were 
to begin the Vicksburg campaign in earnest. All the 
troops that had been left camped on the river levee 
above at Milliken's Bend hurried by roundabout 
roads through cane-brakes and swamps to the point 
where our little boats had anchored after running 
past the batteries that night. Here we joined the 
rest of the army, and the ferrying of thousands of 
soldiers across the great river day and night at once 
commenced. 

My own regiment was put on to one of the iron 
gunboats and ferried over the Mississippi at a point 
close to Grand Gulf. Here our river navy had si- 
lenced the Rebel forts. It was the first gunboat I had 

63 



64 WITH FIHE AND SWOKD 

ever seen. Its sides bore great scars, indentations 
made by the enemy's batteries on the preceding day. 
We hurried on and became a part of the reserve at 
the hot battle of Port Gibson, as we ourselves did 
no fighting. In a plantation yard, close by my regi- 
ment, lay our wounded as they were carried back from 
the front. It was a terrible sight. Many had been 
torn by shrapnel and lay there on the grass in great 
agony. Some seemed with their own hands to be 
trying to tear their mangled limbs from their bodies. 
The possession of all Vicksburg did not seem worth 
the pain and the agony I saw there that afternoon. 
That was war ; and it was ^'hell," sure enough. 

The next day, when the battle was over, I was at 
a negro cabin getting a loaf of corn bread. I sud- 
denly heard a little cheering down by the river, 
where some men were putting down pontoons in place 
of the bridge burned by the enemy. I went down at 
once, and as I stood by the river bank I noticed an 
officer on horseback in full general's uniform. Sud- 
denly he dismounted and came over to the very spot 
where I was standing. I did not know his face, but 
something told me it was Grant, — Ulysses Grant, — 
at that moment the hero of the Western army. Solid 
he stood, erect, about ^ve feet eight in height, with 
square features, thin, closed lips, brown hair, brown 
beard, both cut short, and neat. "He must weigh 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 65 

one hundred and forty or fifty pounds. Looks just 
like the soldier he is. I think he is larger than 
l!^apoleon, but not much ; he is not so dumpy, his legs 
are not so short, and his neck is not so short and 
thick. He looks like a man in earnest, and the Rebels 
think he is one." 

This was the first time I saw Grant. I think T 
still possess some of the feeling that came over me at 
that moment as I stood so near to one who held our 
lives, and possibly his country's life, in his hands. 
How little I dreamed that some day I ^vould have the 
great honor of sitting beside him at my own table. 
Yet this occurred. 

Now he spoke, "Men, push right along: clope up 
fast, and hurry over." Two or three men on mules 
attempted to wedge past the soldiers on the bridge. 
Grant noticed it, and quietly said, "Lieutenant, ar- 
rest those men and send them to tlie rear." Every 
soldier passing turned to gaze on him. But there 
was no further recognition. There was no Mc- 
Clellan begging the boys to allow him to light his 
cifi^ar by theirs ; no inquiring to what regiment that 
exceedingly fine marching company belonged; there 
was no Pope bullying the men for not marching 
faster, reprovins: officers for neglecting trivial details 
remembered only by martinets; there was no Bona- 
parte posturing for effect; no pointing to the pyra- 



66 WITH FIRE A:N^D SWOED 

mids, no calling the centuries to witness. There was 
no nonsense, no sentiment. Only a plain business 
man of the republic there for the one single purpose 
of getting that army across the river in the shortest 
time possible. In short, it was just plain General 
Grant, as he appeared on his way to Yicksburg. On 
a horse near by, and among the still mounted staff, 
sat the General's son, a bright-looking lad of perhaps 
eleven years. Fastened to his little waist by i\ broad 
yellow belt was his father's sword — ^that sword on 
whose clear steel was yet to be engraved "Vicksburg," 
''Spotsylvania," "The Wilderness," "Appomattox." 
The boy talked and jested with the bronzed soldiers 
near him, who laughingly inquired where we should 
camp that night ; to which the young field marshal 
replied, "Oh, over the river." 

"Over the river!" Ah, that night we slept with 
our guns in our hands, and another night, and an- 
other, saw more than one of our division, and of my 
own regiment, camped over the river — in that last 
tenting ground — ^where the reveille was heard no 
more forever. 

My own command crossed the bridge that night 
by torchlight. It was a strange weird scene. Many 
of the Eebel dead — ^l^illed beyond the stream by our 
cannon before our approach — still lay at the roadside 
or in fields unburied. At one turn in the road my 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 67 

regiment marclied close by a Rebel battery that had 
been completely destroyed. Men, horses, and all 
lay there dead in indiscriminate heaps. The face 
of one boy lying there among the horses I shall never 
forget. It was daylight now, the bright sun was just 
rising, when I left the ranks a moment to step aside 
to see that boy. He was lying on his back. His 
face was young and fair, his beautiful brown hair 
curled almost in ringlets, and his eyes, brown and 
beautiful, were wide open; his hands were across 
his breast. A cannonball had in an instant cut away 
the top of his head in as straight a line as if it had 
been done with a surgeon's saw. There had been no 
time for agony or pain. The boy's lips were almost 
in a smile. It was a Mississippi battery that had 
been torn to pieces there, and it may be that in a 
home near by a mother stood that morning praying 
for her boy. The South had such war costs as well 
as the North. 

My regiment now entered on all those rapid 
marches and battles in the rear of Vicksburg — Ray- 
mond, Jackson, Champion Hills, and the assaults on 
the breastworks about the city. For days we scarcely 
slept at all; it was hurry here and quickstep there, 
day or night. None of us soldiers or subordinates 
could tell the direction we were marching. We had 
few rations, little water, and almost no rest. We 



68 WITH FIRE AND SWORD 

had left our base at the river, and in a large sense 
we were cut olf and surrounded all the time. The 
capture of a Rebel scout at once changed everything. 
Through him Grant learned how hurrying divisions 
of the enemy were about to unite. A quick move 
could checkmate everything. Indeed, it was noth- 
ing but a great game of chess that was being played, 
only we, the moving pieces, had blood and life. At 
one time Grant's army was as likely to be captured 
as to capture. My regiment, like all the others, hur- 
ried along the country roads through dust that came 
to the shoe top. The atmosphere was yellow with it. 
The moving of a column far away could be traced by 
it. We followed it in the way that Joshua's army fol- 
lowed the mighty cloud. As we passed farms where 
there was something to eat the captains would call out 
to a dozen men of the line to hurry in, carry off all 
they could, and pass it over to the companies still 
marching. It was a singular looking army. So 
whole regiments tramped along with sides of bacon 
or sheaves of oats on the points of their bayonets. We 
dared not halt. When we bivouacked, long after 
dark, often it was the dust of the roadside. We 
always lay upon our arms. Sometimes there was a 
little fire, oftener there was none. The fat bacon 
was eaten raw. 

My regiment was in advance at the engagement 



WITH FIRE AJSTD SWORD 69 

at Raymond ; also at Jackson. At Jackson it rained 
and thundered fearfully during the battle. A Rebel 
battery was on a green slope right in front of us, 
pouring a terrible shelling into- us as we approached 
it from the Raymond road. The shocks of thunder 
so intermingled with the shocks from the guns that 
we could not tell the one from the other, and many 
times a sudden crash of thunder caused us all to 
drop to the ground, fearing a cannonball would cut 
its swath through the regiment. We were marching 
in columns of fours. Shortly, we formed line of 
battle, and in rushing to the left through a great 
canebrake, while we were advancing in battle line 
under a fire of musketry, the order was given to lie 
down. 

We obeyed quickly. How closely, too, we hugged 
the ground and the depression made by a little brook ! 
While I lay there it happened that my major (Mar- 
shall) was close behind me on horseback. He had 
no orders to dismount. I could glance back and see 
his face as the bullets zipped over our heads or past 
him. He sat on his horse as quiet as a statue, save 
that with his right hand he constantly twisted his 
mustache. He looked straight into the cane-brake. 
He was a brave man. Could the enemy behind the 
forests of cane have seen where they were firing he 
would not have lived a minute. Shortly there was 



70 WITH FIRE AND SWORD 

roaring of cannon and quick charges at the other 
side of the town. Jackson was won. 

At daylight the next morning we hurried in the 
direction of Champion Hills. At our left, as we 
went down the road, the battlefield of the day be- 
fore was strewn with corpses of our own men. In 
a few minutes the brave Seventeenth Regiment of 
Iowa had lost 80 men at this spot, out of 360 en- 
gaged in an assault. My friend Captain Walden 
received honorable mention, among others, for gal- 
lantry in this Jackson charge. A few hundred 
yards off I noticed a man in a field quite alone, dig- 
ging in the ground. Out of curiosity I went to 
him and asked what he was doing alone when the 
regiments were all hurrying away. A brown 
blanket covered something near by. He pointed to 
it and said that two of his brothers lay dead under 
that blanket. He was digging a grave for them. 
He went on with his work and I hurried to over- 
take my command. This was the 15th of May, 
1863. I did not know it then, but shortly I was to 
see General Grant in the midst of battle. I was 
to see several other things, and feel some of them 
also. 

My situation as to the Fifth Regiment was 
a peculiar one; being the quartermaster sergeant, 
I belonged to no company in particular. The good 



WITH riEE AND SWOUD 71 

colonel, however, knowing my love for adventure, 
and that I was never lacking in duty, allowed- me 
to attach myself to any company I liked, provided 
only, that there was a reliable substitute perform- 
ing my duties with the train at the rear. I had no 
trouble in securing such a substitute, usually found 
among the slightly wounded soldiers. 

Since we crossed the Mississippi I had marched 
and carried my rifle all the way, — ^had been in 
every skirmish and engagement. Sometimes I 
tramped along with my old Company B of ^Newton, 
sometimes I went with the extreme left of the regi- 
ment. I was no more heroic than all the others in 
the command, but I was fond of the risk and the 
excitement of battle. I would have resigned my 
warrant as quartermaster sergeant in a moment 
rather than miss a hard march or an engagement, 
let the chance be what it might. I think my love 
of adventure, and my seeking it so often away 
from my proper post of duty at the rear, was often 
the occasion of amused comment. Once when 
marching at the left I heard our surgeon. Carpen- 
ter, cry out to another officer riding beside him: 
"There's a fight to-day. Look out. The sign's 
sure. The quartermaster sergeant has got his gun." 

I^one of us private soldiers now really knew in 
what direction we were marching. We heard only 



72 WITH FIRE AND SWORD 

that the enemy was concentrating at Edwards Ferry 
Station, between us and Big Black River. General 
Crocker of my State was now leading our divi- 
sion, and the magnificent General McPherson com- 
manded the army corps. The night of May 15 
the division bivouacked in the woods by the side of 
a road that leads from Bolton toward Vicksburg. 
We marched hard and late that day. The morning 
of the 16th my regiment was up and getting 
breakfast long before daylight. The breakfast con- 
sisted of some w^et dough cooked on the ends of ram- 
rods; nothing more. 

Troops were hurrying past our bivouac by day- 
light. Once I went out to the roadside to look 
about a bit. It was scarcely more than early day- 
light, yet cannon could occasionally be heard in the 
far distance, something like low thunder. As I 
stood there watching some batteries hurrying along 
I noticed a general and his staff gallop through the 
woods, parallel with the road. They were leaping 
logs, brush, or whatever came in their way. It was 
General Grant, hurrying to the front. Shortly 
came the orders, "Fall in !" and we too were hurry- 
ing along that road toward Champion Hills. By 
ten o'clock the sound of the cannon fell thundering 
on our ears, and we hurried all we could, as riders 
came back saying the battle had already begun. As 



WITH riRE AND SWORD 73 

we approached the field the sound of great salvos 
of musketry told us the hour had surely come. The 
sound wa€ indeed terrible. 

At the left of the road we passed a pond of dirty 
water. All who could broke ranks and filled can- 
teens, knowing that in the heat of the fight we 
would need the water terribly. I not only filled my 
canteen, I filled my stomach with the yellow fluid, 
in order to save that in the canteen for a critical 
moment. Just then there was in front of us a ter- 
rific crashing, not like musketry, but more like the 
falling down of a thousand trees at once. Our 
brigade, a small one, was hurried into line of battle 
at the edge of an open field that sloped dow^n a 
little in front of us and then up to a wood-covered 
ridge. That w^ood was full of the Rebel army. 
Fighting was going on to the right and left of us, 
and bullets fleAV into our own line, wounding some 
of us as w^e stood there waiting. There was an old 
well and curb at the immediate right of my regi- 
ment, and many of our boys were climbing over 
each other to get a drop of water. Soon the bullets 
came faster, zipping, zipping among us, thicker 
and thicker. We must have been in full view of the 
enemy as w^e stood there, not firing a shot. Our 
line stood still in terrible suspense, not knowing 
why we w^ere put under fire without directions to 



74 WITH FIRE AND SWOED 

shoot. Zip ! zip ! zip ! came the Rebel bullets, and 
now and then a boy in blue would groan, strike his 
hand to a wounded limb or arm, drop his gun and 
fall to the rear; or perhaps he fell in his tracks 
dead, without uttering a word. We too, who saw 
it, uttered no word, but watched steadily, anxiously 
at the front. 

Then General Grant himself rode up behind us^ 
and so close to the spot where I stood, that I could 
have heard his voice. He leaned against his little 
bay horse, had the inevitable cigar in his mouth, 
and was calm as a statue. Possibly smoking so 
much tranquillized his nerves a little and aided in 
producing calmness. Still, Grant was calm every- 
where; but he also smoked everywhere. Be that a;? 
it may, it required very solid courage to stand there 
quietly behind that line at that moment. For my 
own part, I was in no agreeable state of mind. Iil 
short, I might be killed there at any moment, I 
thought, and I confess to having been nervous and 
alarmed. Every man in the line near me was look- 
ing serious, though determined. We had no reck- 
less fools near us, whooping for blood. Once a 
badly wounded man was carried by the litter-bear 
ers — the drummers of my regiment — close to the 
spot w^here the General stood. He gave a pitying 
glance at the man, I thought, — I was not twenty 



WITH FIKE AND SWORD 75 

feet away, — but he neither spoke nor stirred. Then 
I heard an officer say, ''We are going to charge.'* 
It seems that our troops in front of us in the woods 
had been sadly repulsed, and now our division was 
to rush in and fight in their stead, and the com- 
mander-in-chief was there to witness our assault. 
Two or three of us, near each other, exp^-essed dis- 
satisfaction that the commander of an army in battle 
should expose himself, as General Grant was do- 
ing at that moment. When staff officers came up to 
him, he gave orders in low tones, and they would 
ride away. One of them, listening to him, glanced 
over our heads toward the Rebels awhile, looked 
very grave, and gave some mysterious nods. The 
colonel who was about to lead us also came to the 
General's side a moment. He, too, listened, looked, 
and gave some mysterious nods. Something was 
about to happen. 

"My time has probably come now," I said to my- 
self, and with a little bit of disgust I thought of 
the utter uselessness of being killed there without 
even firing a shot in self-defense. The suspense, 
the anxiety, was indeed becoming fearfully intense. 
Soon General Grant quietly climbed upon his horse, 
looked at us once, and as quietly rode away. Then 
the colonel came along the line with a word to each 
officer. As he came near me he called me from the 



76 WITH FIRE AND SWORD 

ranks and said: "I want you to act as sergeant- 
major of the regiment in this battle." I was sur- 
prised, but indeed very proud of this mark of con- 
fidence in me. "Hurry to the left," he continued. 
"Order the men to fix bayonets — quick!" I ran 
as told, shouting at the top of my voice, "Fix bayo- 
nets ! fix bayonets !" I was not quite to the left, 
when I heard other voices yelling, "Forward ! quick ! 
double quick! forward!" and the line was already 
on the run toward the Rebels. I kept up ray shout- 
ing, "Fix bayonets!" for by some blunder the order 
had not been given in time, and now the men 
were trying to get their bayonets in place while 
running. We were met in a minute by a storm of 
bullets from the wood, but the lines in blue kept 
steadily on, as would a storm of wind and cloud 
moving among the tree-tops. 'Now we met almost 
whole companies of wounded, defeated men from the 
other division, hurrying by us, and they held up 
their bleeding and mangled hands to show us they 
had not been cowards. They had lost twelve hun- 
dred men on the spot we were about to occupy. Some 
of them were laughing even, and yelling at us: 
^Wade in and give them hell." We were wading 
in faster than I am telling the story. 

On the edge of a low ridsre we saw a solid wall 
of men in siray, their muske-s at their shoulders 



WITH PIEE AND SWORD 77 

blazing into our faces and their batteries of artil- 
lery roaring as if it were the end of the world. 
Bravely they stood there. They seemed little over 
a hundred yards away. There was no charging 
further by our line. We halted, the two lines stood 
still, and for over an hour we loaded our guns and 
killed each other as fast as we could. The firinic 
and the noise were simply appalling. Now, I was 
not scared. The first shot I fired seemed to take 
all my fear away and gave me courage enough to 
calmly load my musket at the muzzle and fire it 
forty times. Others, with more cartridges, fired 
possibly oftener still. Some of the regiments in 
that bloody line were resupplied with cartridges 
from the boxes of the dead. In a moment I saw 
Captain Lindsey throw up his arms, spring upward 
and fall dead in his tracks. Corporal McCully was 
struck in the face by a shell. The blood covered 
him all over, but he kept on firing. Lieutenant 
Darling dropped dead, and other ofiicers near me 
fell wounded. 

I could not see far to left or right, the smoke of 
battle was covering everything. I saw bodies of 
our men lying near me without knowing who they 
were, though some of them were my messmates in 
the morning. The Eebels in front we could not see 
at all. We simply fired at their lines by guess, and 



78 WITH FIRE AND SWOED 

occasionally the blaze of their guns showed exactly 
where they stood. They kept their line like a wall 
of fire. When I fired my first shot I had resolved 
to aim at somebody or something as long as I could 
see, and a dozen times I tried to bring down an of- 
ficer I dimly saw on a gray horse before me. Pretty 
soon a musket ball struck me fair in the breast. ^'I 
am dead, now/' I said, almost aloud. It felt as if 
someone had struck me with a club. I stepped 
back a few paces and sat down on a log to finish up 
with the world. Other wounded men were there, 
covered with blood, and some were lying by me 
dead. I spoke to no one. It would have been use- 
less ; thunder could scarcely have been heard at that 
moment. My emotions I have almost forgotten. I 
remember only that something said to me, ''It is 
honorable to die so." I had not a thought of friends, 
or of home, or of religion. The stupendous things 
going on around me filled my mind. On getting my 
breath a little I found I was not hurt at all, — simply 
stunned ; the obliquely-fired bullet had struck the 
heavy leather of my cartridge belt and glanced away. 
I picked up my gun, stepped back into the line of 
battle, and in a moment was shot through the hand. 
The wound did not hurt ; I was toO' excited for that. 
The awful roar of battle now grew more terrific, 
if Dossible. I wonder that a man on either side was 



WITH FIRE A:N"D SWORD Y9 

left alive. Biting the ends off my cartridges, my 
moutli was filled with gunpowder; the thirst was 
intolerable. Every soldier's face was black as a 
negro's, and, with some, blood from wounds trickled 
down over the blackness, giving them a horrible 
look. Once a boy from another part of the line to 
our left ran up to me crying out : '^My regiment is 
gone ! what shall I do ?" 

There was now a little moment's lull in the 
howling noise; something was going on. "Blaze 
away right here," I said to the boy, and he com- 
menced firing like a veteran. Then I heard one of 
our own line cry, ''My God, they're flanking us !'* 
I looked to where the boy had come from. His 
regiment had indeed given way. The Rebels had 
poured through the gap and were already firing into 
our rear and yelling to us to surrender. In a mo- 
ment we would be surrounded. It was surrender 
or try to get back past them. I ran like a race- 
horse, — so did the left of the regiment, amid a 
storm of bullets and yells and curses. I saved my 
musket, anyway. I think all did that, — but that 
half-mile race through a hot Mississippi sun, witli 
bullets and cannonballs plowing the fields behind 
us, will never be forgotten. My lungs seemed to 
be burning up. Once I saw our regimental flag 
lying by a log, the oolor-bearer wounded or dead. 



80 WITH FIRE AND SWORD 

I cried to a comrade flying near me, ^'Duncan Teter, 
it is a shame — the Fifth Iowa nmning." 

Only the day before Teter had been reduced to 
the ranks for some offense or another. He picked 
np the flag and with a great oath dared me to stop 
and defend it. For a moment we two tried to rally 
to the flag the men who were running by. We 
might as well have yelled to a Kansas cyclone. Then 
Captain John Tait, rushing by, saw us, stopped, 
and, recognizing the brave deed of Corporal Teter, 
promoted him on the spot. But the oncoming 
storm was irresistible, and, carrying the flag, we 
all again hurried rearward. We had scarcely passed 
the spot where I had seen Grant mount his horse 
before the charge when a whole line of Union can- 
non, loaded to the muzzle with grape-shot and can- 
nister, opened on the howling mob that was pursu- 
ing us. The Rebels instantly halted, and now again 
it seemed our turn. A few minutes rest for breath 
and our re-formed lines once more dashed into the 
woods. In half an hour the battle of Champion 
Hills was won, and the victorious Union army was 
shortly in a position to compel the surrender of the 
key to the Mississippi River. Grant's crown of im- 
mortality was won, and the jewel that shone most 
brightly in it w^as set there by the blood of the men 
of Champion Hills. Had that important battle 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 81 

failed, Grant's army, not Pemberton's, would have 
become prisoners of war. Where then would have 
been Vicksbiirg, Spotsylvania, Richmond, Appo- 
mattox ? 

Six thousand blue- and gray-coated men were ly- 
ing there in the woods, dead or wounded, when the 
last gun of Champion Hills was fired. Some of the 
trees on the battlefield were tall magnolias, and 
many of their limbs were shot away. The trees 
were in full bloom, their beautiful blossoms contrast- 
ing with the horrible scene of battle. Besides kill- 
ing and wounding three thousand of the enemy, we 
had also captured thirty cannon and three thousand 
prisoners. 

Wrien the troops went ofi into the road to start in 
pursuit of the fiying enemy, I searched over the 
battlefield for my best friend, poor Captain Poag, 
with whom I had talked of our Northern homes only 
the night before. He lay dead among the leaves, a 
"bullet hole in his forehead. Somebody buried him, 
but I never saw his grave. iVnother friend I found 
dying. He begged me only to place him against o 
tree, and with leaves to shut the burning sun away 
from his face. While I w\^s doing this I heard the 
groaning of a Rebel officer, who lay helpless in a 
little ditch. He called to me to lift him out, as he 
was shot through both thighs, and suffering terri- 



82 WITH FIRE AND SWOED 

bly. "Yes/' I said, "as soon as I get my friend 
here arranged a little comfortably." His reply was 
pathetic. "Yes, that's right ; help your own first." 
I had not meant it so. I instantly got to him and, 
with the aid of a comrade, pulled him out of the 
ditch. He thanked me and told me he was a lieu- 
tenant colonel, and had been shot while riding in 
front of the spot where he lay. I eased his posi- 
tion as best I could, but all that night, with many 
another wounded soldier, blue and gray, he was 
left on the desolate battlefield. 

Now I realized how terrible the fire had been 
about us, — for some comrades counted two hundred 
bullet marks on a single oak tree within a few feet 
of where the left of the regiment had stood loading 
and firing that awful hour and a half. Most of the 
bullets had been fired too high, else we had all been 
killed. Near by lay the remains of a Eebel battery. 
Every horse and most of the cannoneers lay dead in 
a heap, the caissons and the gun carriages torn to 
pieces by our artillery. Never in any battle had I 
seen such a picture of complete annihilation of men, 
animals, and material as was the wreck of this bat- 
tery, once the pride of some Southern town — its 
young men, the loved ones of Southern homes, lying 
there dead among their horses. That was war! 

Some weeks after this battle, and after Yicks- 



WITH EIRE AND SWORD 83 

burg had been won, my regiment was marched in 
pursuit of Joe Johnston, and we recrossed this 
same battlefield. We reached it in the night and 
bivouacked on the very spot where we had fought. 
It was a strange happening. Our sensations were 
very unusual, for we realized that all about us 
there in the woods were the graves of our buried 
comrades and the still unburied bones of many of 
our foes. Save an occasional hooting owl the woods 
were sad and silent. Before we lay down in the 
leaves to sleep the glee club of Company B sang 
that plaintive song, ''We're Tenting To-night on 
the Old Camp Ground." ^ever was a song sung 
under sadder circumstances. All the night a terri- 
ble odor filled the bivouac. When daylight came 
one of the boys came to our company and said, ''Go 
over to that hollow, and you will see hell.'' Some 
of us went. We looked but once. Dante himself 
never conjured anything so horrible as the reality 
before us. After the battle the Rebels in their haste 
had tossed hundreds of their dead into this little 
ravine and slightly covered them over with earth, 
but the rains had come, and the earth was washed 
away, and there stood or lay hundreds of half -de- 
cayed corpses. Some were grinning skeletons, some 
were headless, some armless, some had their clothes 
torn away, and some were mangled by dogs and 



84 WITH FIRE AND SWORD 

wolves. The horror of that spectacle followed us 
for weeks. That, too, was war ! 

I have written this random but true sketch of 
personal recollections of a severe battle because it 
may help young men who are anxious for adven- 
ture and w^ar, as I was, to first realize what war 
really is. My experiences probably were the same 
as hundreds of others in that same battle. I only 
tell of what was nearest me. A third of my com- 
rades who entered this fight were lost. Other Iowa 
and other Western regiments suffered equally or 
more. General Hovey^s division had a third of its 
number slain. I have been in what history pro- 
nounces greater battles than Champion Hills, but 
only once did I ever see two lines of blue and gray 
stand close together and fire into each other's faces 
for an hour and a half. I think the courage of the 
private soldiers, standing in that line of fire for that 
awful hour and a half, gave us Vicksburg, made 
Grant immortal as a soldier, and helped to save this 
country. 

But I must return to that afternoon of the battle. 
All that could be assembled of our men 
gathered in line in a road near the field. It was 
nearly dark. Sergeant Campbell walked about, 
making a list of the dead and wounded of Com- 
pany B. As I was not now on the company rolls. 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 85 

being quartermaster sergeant, my name was not put 
down as one of the wounded. Nor, seeing how 
many were sadly torn to pieces, did I think my 
wound worth reporting. Shortly General Grant 
passed us in the road. Knowing well how the regi- 
ment had fought in the battle, he rode to where our 
colors hung over a stack of muskets and saluted 
them. We all jumped to our feet and cheered. He 
spoke a few words to the colonel and rode on into the 
darkness. That night we marched ahead, and in the 
morning bivouacked in the woods as a reserve for 
troops fighting at the Black River bridge. There 
it was that Grant reached the crisis of his career. 
While sitting on his horse waiting to witness a 
charge by Lawler's brigade, a staff officer overtook 
him, bringing a peremptory order from Washing- 
ton to abandon the campaign and take his army to 
Port Hudson to help General Banks. That mo- 
ment Grant glanced to the right of his lines and 
saw a dashing officer in his shirt sleeves suddenly 
come out of a cluster of woods, leading his brigade 
to the assault. It was General Lawler, and in five 
minutes the Rebel breastworks were carried, the 
enemy in flight or drowning in the rapid river. 
Then Grant turned to the staff officer and simply 
said, ''See that charge/ I ihinTc it is too late to 
abandon this campaign/' The movements that were 



86 WITH FIEE AND SWOED 

to make him immortal went on. Had that order of 
Halleck's, written of course without knowledge of 
the recent victories, been followed, Banks, and not 
Grant, would have been first commander in the 
West. Had Lawler's charge failed just then and 
the battle been lost. Grant could have had no ex- 
cuse for not obeying the order that staff officer held 
in his hand, directing him to abandon what turned 
out to be one of the great campaigns of history. 
While sitting there in his saddle at the close of that 
charge, General Grant wrote a little note in pencil, 
the original of which is among my treasured souve- 
nirs of the war : 

"Dear General: Lawler's brigade stormed the enemy's 
works a few minutes since; carried them, capturing from 
two thousand to three thousand prisoners, ten guns, so far 
as heard from, and probably more will be found. The 
enemy have fired both bridges. A. J. Smith captured ten 
guns this morning, with teams, men, and ammunition. I 
send you a note from Colonel Wright. 
"Yours, 

"U. S. Grant, M. G. 

"To Major General Sherman." 



CHAPTER VIII 

Assaults on the walls of Vicksburg — Logan in battle — An 
army mule — A promotion under the guns of Vicks- 
burg — A storm of iron hail at Vicksburg — The Vicks- 
burg clock — The town surrenders — The glad news — 
Reading my first order to the regiment — My regiment 
put on guard in the captured city — Eight days' furlough 
in four years of war. 

The next morning (the 18th) my regiment 
crossed the pontoon bridge over the Big Black and 
marched eight miles further toward Vicksburg. 
I^ow we knew we were getting close to the Rich- 
mond of the West. As we crossed the Black River 
we gazed with curiosity at the half-burned bridge 
from which so many unfortunates had been hurled 
into the water by our artillery the day before. 
After Lawler's charge thousands had tried to get 
over the stream by the trestle-work and bridge, or 
by swimming. General Osterhaus, seeing the fugi- 
tives from a high point where he stood, cried out to 
his batteries: ^'^ow, men, is the time to give them 
hell." Twenty cannon instantly hurled their iron 
missiles at the bridge, and the flying soldiers fell to 

87 



88 WITH FIRE AND SWORD 

the ground or into the foaming river, almost by 
hundreds. "Lost at Black River/' was the only 
message that ever reached the home of many a 
Southern soldier of that day. 

On the 19th, at two o'clock, a terrible assault 
was made by the army on the walls of Vicksburg. 
My own regiment, still in McPherson's corps, lay 
close to the Jackson wagon road and under a tre- 
mendous thundering of the enemy's artillery. We 
suffered little, however. Once I was ordered to 
help some men build sheds of brush for the 
wounded. This was in a ravine behind us. In an 
hour the work was done, and as I crept up the 
slope to get forward to my regiment again I heard 
the loud voice of some officer on horseback. It was 
General John A. Logan. The enemy's artillery was 
sweeping the field at this point, but I could still 
hear Logan's voice above the battle, cheering a 
number of soldiers that were near. "We have taken 
this fort and we have taken that," he cried in tones 
that were simply stentorian. "We are giving them 
hell everywhere." He was in full uniform, his 
long black hair swept his shoulders, his eyes 
flashed fire, he seemed the incarnation of the reck- 
less, fearless soldier. He must have thought can- 
nonballs would not hurt him. For five minutes, 
perhaps, I stood in a little dip in the ground, com- 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 89 

paratively protected, while he rode up and down 
under a storm of connonballs, calling at the top of 
his warrior's voice. I expected every moment to 
see him drop from his horse, but nothing happened, 
and I went on to the line where all our men were 
closely hugging the ground. Soon I, too, was 
stretched on the ground, making myself as thin as 
I could. 

On the 20th we advanced still closer to the frown- 
ing works. It was only a thousand yards to the 
forts of Vicksburg. We moved up in the darkness 
that night. I think no one knew how close we were 
being taken to the enemy. We lay down in line of 
battle and in the night our line was moved a little. 
When daylight came my regiment was no little 
astonished to find that we were on an open place in 
full view of the enemy. A comrade and I rose 
from the ground and commenced our toilet, by pour- 
ing water into each other's hands from our canteens. 
Almost at that moment the Rebels had caught sight 
of our men lying there in long lines so close to 
them, and instantly commenced throwing shells at 
us. My friend and I left our morning toilet un- 
completed and, seizing our rifles, we all stood in 
line waiting. We could see the flags of the enemy 
above the forts distinctly. With a glass the gun- 
ners could be seen at their guns, hurling shot and 



90 WITH riKE AND SWOKD 

shell at us. We were in a perilous and helpless po- 
sition. We were also very tired and hungry, for 
we had had nothing whatever to eat. But here we 
stayed, and by the next morning our skirmishers 
had advanced so close to the Vicksburg forts that 
the Rebel gunners could reach us but little. Our 
gunboats too, dow^n in the river now commenced 
hurling mighty bombs and balls into the city. 

On the morning of the 2 2d of May all the bat- 
teries of the army and the big guns of the river 
fleet bombarded the city for an hour, and under the 
fog and the smoke of the battle the infantry ad- 
vanced to assault the works. It was a perilous un- 
dertaking. The day was fearfully hot; the forts, 
ten feet high, were many and powerful ; the ditches 
in front of them were seven feet deep. That made 
seventeen feet to climb in the face of musketry. 
In battle line, my regiment ran down into the 
ravines in front and then up the opposite slope to 
the smoking breastwork. 

The colonel had ordered me to fasten two ammu- 
nition boxes across a mule and follow the regiment 
into the assault. I was to lead my mule. A soldier 
with a bush was to beat him from behind, so as to 
hurry him over an exposed bit of ground at our 
front. The moment my mule appeared in full sight 
of the enemy the bullets commenced whizzing past 



WITH FIRE AISTD SWORD 91 

us. The mule, true to his ancestral instinct, com- 
menced pulling backward. Yelling and pounding 
and pulling helped none at all. Two or three bul- 
lets struck the boxes on his back, and before we had 
pulled him half across he braced himself, held his 
ears back, and stood stock still. That moment the 
bridle came off. My assistant dodged back to our 
rifle pit and I hurried down to the ravine in front. 
The mule, too, as luck would have it, also ran now, 
— ran down into the ravine beside me, right where 
he was wanted. I tied him to a little bush and, awful 
as the situation about me was, I almost laughed to 
see the antics of that animal's ears as the bullets 
whizzed past him. 

My regiment was all lying against the hill close 
up to the fort. In front of them was the ditch 
seven feet deep, beyond them an armed fort ten 
feet high, emitting a constant blaze of cannon and 
musketry. The sun was broiling hot. I crept along 
the line of the regiment and gave ammunition to 
every company; then I crept back a little to where 
my mule was still alive and his ears still at their 
antics. Lying there in the line beside the boys, 
roasting in the sun and suffering from the musketry 
in front, was our brave Colonel Boomer, leading 
the briorade. He asked me once what I was doing, 
and, when I told him, he gave me some compli- 



92 WITH FIRE AND SWORD 

ments in a kind, but sad, low tone. Now I saw a 
company of men creep by me, dragging little lad- 
ders in their hands. They were to make a rush 
and throw these ladders across the ditch of the 
forts for the assaulters to cross on. They were all 
volunteers for a work that seemed sure death. 1 
looked in each hero's face as he passed me, knowing 
almost that he Avould be dead in a few minutes. 
Scarcely a dozen of them returned alive. My regi- 
ment, with the rest of the assaulters, was simply 
being shot to pieces without a hope of getting into 
the forts. We fell back under the smoke of tho 
battle as best w^e could, only to be led into an as- 
sault at another point. McClemand had sent 
Grant word that he had taken a fort on our left. 
He wanted help to hold it. 

Our division, now led by Quimby, was double 
quicked to the next place of assault. I saved my 
mule. Again I strapped two ammunition boxes 
over his back and followed the regiment. This 
time I did not risk my mule so close in the battle, 
but took all the cartridges I could carry in my arms 
and went to the left of the regiment. Once I saw a 
body lying on the grass by me, with a handkerchief 
over the face. I went up and looked. It was our 
own Colonel Boomer, who had spoken so kindly to 
me in the morning. A useless charge had already 



WITH FIHE AND SWOKD 93 

been made by the brigade and he, with many brave 
men, was dead. Some of my own company lay dead 
there too. One of them had come from Iowa and 
joined his brother in the company that very morn- 
ing. All the assaulting of the 22d of May and all 
the sacrifice of life had been for nothing. Vicks- 
biirg was not taken. 

Now commenced the regular siege of the city. 
We hid ourselves behind ridges, in hollows, and in 
holes in the ground, as best we could. Communi- 
cation with our gunboats on the Yazoo was opened, 
and we had plenty to eat and ammunition enough 
to bombard a dozen cities. Then the bombardment 
commenced indeed, and lasted to the end, forty-four 
days. We often threw three hundred cannonballs 
and shells a day into the city. The whole Eebel 
army was also hidden in holes and hollows. All 
the people of Vicksburg lived in caves at the sides 
of the hills or along the bluffs of the river. Their 
homes now were like swallows' nests, with small 
entrances in the face of hills and bluffs and big, 
dug-out chambers inside. It was a strange life. 
With the eternal hail of cannon over them day and 
night, and starvation a familiar figure to them, it 
must have been a horrible one. 

Now we advanced our rifle pits and trenches and 
mines close up to the Rebel forts, though our main 



94 WITH FIRE ANB SWORD 

lines lay in the ravines and on the ridge a few hun- 
dred feet farther back. As for me, when not looking 
after the ammunition, a trifling duty now, I was in 
the trenches with the others. 

One morning when out there at the front among 
our riflemen, who were forever blazing day and 
night at every Rebel fort and rifle pit, I noticed 
our good Colonel Matthies creeping along the 
trench to where I was. He had a package of brown 
paper in his hand. Imagine my surprise and pride 
to have him come to me and say: "Sergeant, this 
officer's sash is yours." Then he announced my 
appointment as adjutant of the regiment. He had 
been made a general now, and would soon leave for 
his new command. This sash was one that he had 
worn and honored on many a battlefield. Is it any 
wonder that now, after the long and perilous years, 
it is preserved by me as a souvenir of honor ? 
Soon after, I w^ent to a sutler's store on the Yazoo 
River to buy a sword and uniform. In those days 
swords were not given to officers by committees in 
dress coats, until they had been earned. This little 
trip to get my sword almost cost me ray life. 
My path to the river, six miles away, lay partly 
along a ridge and partly close to an empty Rebel 
fort. This fort showed scarcely any signs of hav- 
ing ever been used. I stayed all night with the 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 95 

sutler, whom I knew very well, and at noon on a 
hot day started, on my big yellow government 
horse, to go back to my regiment. My sword was 
buckled on me and my new uniform was tied in a 
bundle on my saddle-bow. It was too hot to ride 
fast, and my horse almost slept as he slowly carried 
me close by the seemingly abandoned fort. Sud- 
denly there was a crash and a whole volley of mus- 
ketry rattled about my ears. My poor horse fell 
dead. It was a quick awakening, but I managed 
to pull my bundle from the saddle-bow and to es- 
cape into a ravine where our own troops lay. 
There I learned that the fort had been occupied by 
the Rebels in the night, while I was with the sutler. 
It was a close call for me. One of the boys de- 
clared he could save my saddle and bridle. '^Take 
them as a present," I said, "if you can get them." 
He crept up to where my dead horse lay, and as 
he rose to his feet to undo the saddle another volley 
from the fort hastened him to the ravine. I laughed. 
''If your saddle and bridle were made of gold and 
silver,'' he shouted at me as he ran back, "I wouldn't 
try it again." 

Slowly and without perceptible advance the siege 
went on. The little battery that my regiment had 
saved at luka was still with us and behind some 
breastworks at our immediate right. It was no un- 



96 WITH EIRE AND SWORD 

common thing to see even Grant himself come along 
and stop and watch Captain Sears' gnns knock the 
dirt up from some fort in front of ns. One day 
this battery wounded a man who was running be- 
tween two Rebel breastworks. The enemy tried to 
secure his body, but every soul that showed himself 
for an instant was shot by our riflemen. Eor half 
an hour this shooting over one poor man's body was 
kept lip, until it seemed that a battle was taking 
place. 

Now our lines were so close together that our 
pickets often had a cup of coffee or a chew of tobacco 
with the Rebel pickets at night. Drummer Bain, 
of my company, had a brother among the soldiers 
inside Vicksburg. One night he met him at the 
picket line, and together they walked all through 
the beleagured town. But such things were danger- 
ous business and had to be kept very quiet. The 
weather was now very warm and fine, some of the 
nights clear moonlight, and when the guns had 
stopped their roaring many a time in the quiet 
night we heard the bell clock on the Vicksburg 
Court House measuring out the hours. It is said 
that this clock never stopped for an instant in all 
the siege, nor under the hundred cannon that rained 
iron hail into the town. At night, too, the big 
mortars from our fleet some miles from us tossed 



WITH FIRE A^T> SWORD 97 

mighty bombs into the air, that sailed like blazing 
comets and fell at last among the people hidden in 
their caves. 

One day Governor Kirk^^ood of Iowa visited 
our regiment and made a speech to ns in a hollow 
back of our line. We cheered, and the Rebels, hear- 
ing us and knowing we must be assembled in masses, 
hurled a hundred cannonballs and shells over our 
heads, yet I think few were hurt. This was the 
3d of June. Every night that we lay there on the 
line we went to sleep fearing to be waked by an 
attack from the army of Rebels under Johnston, 
now assembled at our rear. This was the force we 
most feared, not the army we had penned up in 
Vicksburg. ^Nevertheless, the batteries in front of 
us gave us enough to do to prevent any ennui on 
our part. On the 15 th of June the enemy got one 
big gun in a position to rake from our left the 
ravine in which my regiment was lying. We all 
stuck close to our little caves on the ridge side, and 
few got hurt.. In the meantime we were working 
day and night putting more breastworks in front 
of us, though we were now but four hundred yards 
away from the Rebel lines. Here, as many times 
elsewhere, I copy from my diary. "Last night, the 
16th, the major of our rerfment, Marshall, took two 
hundred men and worked all night digging new 



98 WITH FIRE AND SWORD 

ditclies and building breastworks. It. was rainy 
and muddy. The Rebels beard us at tbe work and 
in the darkness slipped up and captured a few men. 
Some of the enemy, however, also got taken in. 
This is the kind of work that is going on every 
night until daybreak, and then we fire bullets all 
the day into the enemy's lines, to prevent their re- 
pairing their forts. The cannonading and the riflo 
shooting never cease. The roar is simply incessant, 
and yet when oif duty we sleep like newborn babes. 

"All the region we are in is hills and ravines, 
brush and cane-brake, with here and there a littlo 
cotton field. Nature defends Vicksburg more than 
a dozen armies could. She has built scores of po- 
sitions around the town strong as anything at 
Sevastapol." 

The rumors kept coming of a purposed attack on 
our rear. On the 20th of June, at four o'clock in 
the morning, all the cannon on Grant's lines and all 
the cannon on the gunboats opened fire on the town 
and thundered at it for six mortal hours. They 
must have been awful hours for the people inside. 
No such cannonading ever took place on the conti- 
nent before or since. We private soldiers did not 
know the exact object of this fearful bombardment. 
The Rebels probably lay in battle line, expecting 
an assault, and must have suffered greatly. 



WITH FIKE AND SWORD 99 

In the night of the 2 2d of June, at midnight, 
rumors again came of a great Rebel army marching 
on our rear. It was a beautiful moonlight night, 
and my regiment, together with whole divisions of 
the army, received orders to hurry back toward 
Black River, where cavalry skirmishing had taken 
place. 'No battle came on, but for two days we lay 
in line of battle, or else built breastworks for de- 
fense. 

On the 3d of July, as we were bivouacked in a 
little wood, news came that the whole Rebel army 
in Vicksburg had prepared to surrender the next 
day, the Nation's jubilee day. Instantly the regi- 
ment was ordered to fall in. I had no little 
pride in reading to the men the dispatch from Gen- 
eral Grant announcing the great news. It was the 
first order I had ever read to the regiment as its 
adjutant, and its great importance gratified me 
much. The whole command acted as if they were 
drunken or had suddenly lost their minds. Privates 
and ofiicers shook hands and laughed and wept, while 
majors and colonels turned somersaults on the 
grass. It was indeed a great moment to us all. 
Twenty-seven thousand men, with twenty-four gen- 
erals and one hundred and eighty cannon, was a 
great capture. We all knew we had made history 
on that day. 



100 WITH FIRE AND SWORD 

IN'ow the whole Rebel army passed out along the 
roads where we lay. I sat on a rail fence near our 
bivouac and watched the host go by. The officers 
all looked depressed, but the soldiers seemed glad 
the suspense and danger were over and that now 
they could have enough to eat. Our regiment freely 
divided with them all we had. 

"After a few days pursuit of Johnston^s army 
at our rear (now suddenly our front), my regi- 
ment is ordered into Vicksburg. We pass in over 
the breastworks that had been so terrible to us a 
few days before. Looking at them, I wonder at 
our hardihood in assaulting them. It would be hard 
to climb through these ditches and into these forts 
even were no cannon and no deadly muskets behind 
them. 

My regiment is put on duty as a city guard. 
It now seems strange enough to be guarding the 
very town and the very forts we had so recently 
been assaulting. There are other troops here, but 
the Fifth Iowa is the guard proper. We find the 
town badly battered up, with terrible signs of war 
everywhere. There, too, were the graves of the 
dead and brave defenders. If wrong, they still had 
been brave men." Years afterward, a shaft was 
put up to their memory, and on it I read these 
words : 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 101 

"We care not whence they came, 

Dear in their lifeless clay, 
Whether unknown, or known to fame, 
Their cause and country's still the same. 
They died, and they wore the gray." 

The weatlier continued hot while we were there 
guarding the town, and the place was very sickly; 
many citizens and very many colored soldiers died. It 
was pitiable to see how little people cared, even our 
own soldiers, whether these poor negro soldiers died or 
lived. Our own regiment suffered little, yet on July 
28 seventy were in the hospital. We camped at 
Randolph and Locust streets, and spite of the mer- 
cury's being 100 degrees in the shade, had pleasant 
soldier times. I mounted the guard every morning 
and then spent most of the day reading to the colonel, 
who was sick. 

In September I secured a leave of absence to go 
North. For the only time during the four years' 
war I visited my home. I was there but eight days, 
half of my time having been lost by the steamer I 
was on sticking on sandbars. 

I saw ' strange sights in the North in those few- 
days — ^^vomen and children and old men reaping 
the fields; home guards training at every village; 
cripples and hospitals ever}^where. Yet in spite of 
war prosperity was blessing the North. 



CHAPTEK IX 

Sherman's army floats across the Tennessee River at mid- 
night — Washington at the Delaware nothing compared 
to this — We assault Missionary Ridge — An awful battle 
— My capture. 

On mj return from mj home to my regiment T 
found it had heen transported to Memphis, where, as 
a part of General Sherman's army corps, we were 
now to make a forced march to relieve Rosecrans' 
army at Chattanooga. Chickamauga had been lost. 
The Union army lying under Lookout Mountain 
was starving and its destruction almost certain. We 
made now the march of four hundred miles from 
the Tennessee River, at Florence, in twenty days, 
without incident. On the 22d of l^ovember, 1863, 
we beheld the heights of Lookout Mountain and Mis- 
sionary Ridge. 

ISTovember 23, 1863, and the great battle of Chat- 
tanooga was about to begin. The victorious Rebel 
army, seventy-five thousand strong, lay intrenched 
along the heights of Missionary Ridge and on top 
of Lookout Mountain. My regiment was in Sher- 
man's corps that had just hurried across from Mem- 

102 



WITH FIKE A'NJ) SWOKD 103 

phis. We had marclied twenty miles a day. ISTow 
this corps was to form the left of Grant's forces, 
cross a deep river in the darkness, and assault the 
nearly inaccessible position of Bragg's army. That 
night we lay in bivouac in the woods close by the 
Tennessee River. We very well knew that 116 rude 
pontoon boats had been built for us and were lying 
hidden in a creek near by. We had almost no ra- 
tions for the army. As for the horses and mules, 
they had already starved to death by the thousands, 
and were lying around everywhere. Tlotoecran\s 
army had been virtually besieged, and was about to 
starve or surrender when Grant came on to the 
ground and took command. When Sherman'^, corps 
got up it was decided to stake all on a greiit battle. 
If defeated, we should probably all be lost. All the 
men in Shernian's corps who were to make the first 
great assault realized that, and they realized also 
the danger we were now to encounter by attempting 
to cross that rapid river in the night. 

Midnight came and all were clill awake, though 
quiet in the bivouac. At two c^clcck we heard some 
quiet splashing in the water. It was the sound of 
muffled oars. The boats had come for us. Every 
man seized his rifle, for we knew what was i^ommg 
next. '^Quietly, boys, fall in quietly," said the 
captains. Spades were handed to many of vs. We 



104 WITH riEE AND SWOED 

did not ask for what, as we knew loo well. Quietly, 
two by two, we slipped down to the water's edge and 
stepped into the rude flatboats that waited there. 
"Be prompt as you can, boys ; there'c-i room for thirty 
in a boat," said a tall man in a long waterproof coat 
who stood on the bank near us in the darkness. Few 
of us had ever before heard the voice of <nir beloved 
commander. Sherman's kind wor is gave us all 
cheer, and his personal presence, his sharing the 
danger we were about to undertake, gave us confi- 
dence. 

In a quarter of an hour a thousand of us were 
out in the middle of the river ailoar^ in the daikness. 
Silent we sat there, our rifles and our spades across 
our knees. There was no sound but the swashing 
of the water against the boats. We had strange 
feelings, the chief of which was probably the 
thotight: Would the enemy on the opposite bank 
fire into us and drown us all? Every mom.ent we 
expected a flash of musketry or a roar of cannon. 
We did not know that a ruse had been played on the 
pickets on the other side; that a boatload of our 
soldiers had crossed farther up and in the darkness 
caught every one of them without firing a shot. One 
only got away. Who knew how soon all of Braggs' 
army might be alarmed and upon us ? 

In half an hour we were out on the opposite bank 



WITH FIRE AND SWOED 105 

and creeping along tlirough the thicket, a spade in 
one hand a rifle in the other. What might happen 
any moment we knew not. Where was that escaped 
picket ? And where was Braggs' army ? Instantly 
we formed in line of battle and commenced digging 
holes for ourselves. We worked like beavers, turn 
about ; no spade was idle for one moment. Daylight 
found us there, two thousand strong, with rifle pits 
a mile in length. Other brigades got over the river, 
pontoons soon were down; still other troops, whole 
divisions, were across, and forty cannon were massed 
close to the crossing to protect us. What a sight 
was that for General Bragg, when he woke up that 
morning at his headquarters' perch, on top of Mis- 
sionary Ridge! All that day we maneuvered under 
heavy cannonading and drove the enemy from hill 
to hill at our front. Some of the troops did heavy 
fighting, but the Rebels only fell back to their great 
position on the Ridge. 

That night my regiment stood picket at the front. 
The ground was cold and wet, none of us slept a wink, 
and we were almost freezing and starving. We had 
not slept, indeed, for a hundred hours. It had been 
one vast strain, and now a battle was coming on. 
All that night we who were on the picket line could 
hear the Rebel field batteries taking position on Mis- 
sionary Ridge, to fight us on the morrow. The morn- 



106 WITH riEE AND SWOKD 

ing of the 25t]i dawned clear and beautiful. Instantly 
whole divisions of troops commenced slaughtering 
each other for the possession of single hills and spurs. 
At times the battle in front of Sherman was a hand 
to hand encounter. Mj own brigade was so close 
that the Kebels even threw stones down upon us. Over 
to the far right Hooker's men were in possession of 
Lookout Mountain, and were breaking in on the 
enemy's left flank. 

It was two o'clock when our division, my own regi- 
ment with it, received orders from Sherman to fix 
bayonets and join in the assault on Missionary Ridge. 
General J. E. Smith led the division, and General 
Matthies, our former colonel, led the brigade. We 
had to charge over the open, and by this time all the 
cannon in the Rebel army were brought to bear on 
the field we had to cross. We emerged from a little 
wood, and at that moment the storm of shot and shell 
became terrific. In front of us was a rail fence, 
and, being in direct line of fire, its splinters and frag- 
ments flew in every direction. "Jump the fence, 
men ! tear it down !" cried the colonel. Never did 
men get over a fence more quickly. Our distance 
was nearly half a mile to the Rebel position. 

We started on a charge, running across the open 
fields. I had heard the roaring of heavy battle be- 
fore, but never such a shrieking of cannonballs and 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 107 

bursting of shell as met us on that charge. We could 
see the enemy working their guns, while in plain view 
other batteries galloped up, unlimbered, and let loose 
at us. Behind us our own batteries (forty cannon) 
were firing at the enemy over our heads, till the 
storm and roar became horrible. It sounded as if the 
end of the world had come. Halfway over we had 
to leap a ditch, perhaps six feet wide and nearly 
as many deep. Some of our regiment fell into this 
ditch and could not get out, a few tumbled in inten- 
tionally and stayed there. I saw this, and ran back 
and ordered them to get out, called them cowards, 
threatened them with my revolver; they did not 
move. Again I hurried on with the line. All of the 
officers were screaming at the top of their voices ; I, 
too, screamed, trying to make the men hear. "Steady ! 
steady ! bear to the right ! keep in line ! Don't fire ! 
don't fire !" was yelled till we all were hoarse and 
till the awful thunder of the cannon made all com- 
mands unheard and useless. 

In ten minutes, possibly, we were across the field 
and at the begining of the ascent of the Ridge. In- 
stantly the blaze of Rebel musketry was in our faces, 
and we began firing in return. It helped little, the 
foe was so hidden behind logs and stones and little 
breastworks. Still we charged, and climbed a fence 
in front of us and fired and charged again. Then 



108 WITH FIEE Al^B SWOED 

the order was given to lie down and continue firing. 
That moment someone cried, "Look to the tunnel! 
They're coming through the tunnel." Sure enough, 
through a railway tunnel in the mountain the gray- 
coats were coming by hundreds. They were flank- 
ing us completely. 

"Stop them!" cried our colonel to (huse of us at 
the right. "Push them back." It was but the work 
of a few moments for four companies to rise to their 
feet and run to the tunnel's mouth, firing as they ran. 
Too late ! an enfilading fire was soon cutting them to 
pieces. "Shall I nm over there too ?" I said to the 
colonel. We were both kneeling on the ground close 
to the regimental flag. He assented. When I rose to 
my feet and started it seemed as if even the blades 
of grass were being struck by bullets. As I ran over 
I passed many of my comrades stretched out in death, 
and some were screaming in agony. For a few min- 
utes the whole bris^ade faltered and gave way. 

Colonel Matthies, our bri^rade coram an (i^^r, was 
sitting against a tree, shot in the head. Instantly it 
seemed as if a whole Kebel army was con centra ted on 
that single spot. For a few moments I lay down on 
the grass, hopins^ the storm would pass over and leave 
me. Lieutenant Miller, at my side, was sereamino^ in 
agony. He was shot through the hips. I begged him 
to trv to be still ; he could not. IN'ow, as a >;econd linf 



/ 
WITH FIRE AND SWORD 109 

of the enemy was upon us, and the first one was re- 
turning, shooting men as they found them, I rose 
to my feet and surrendered. ^^Come out of that 
sword," shrieked a hig Georgian, with a terrible oath. 
Another grabbed at my revolver and bellowed at me 
"to get up the hill quicker than helL" It was time, 
for our own batteries were pouring a fearful fire on 
the very spot where we stood. I took a blanket from 
a dead comrade near me, and at the point of the 
bayonet I was hurried up the mountain. We passed 
lines of infantry in rifle pits and batteries that were 
pouring a hail of shells into our exposed columns. 
Once I glanced back, and — glorious sight! — I saw 
lines of bluecoats at our right and center, storming up 
the ridge. 

In a few minutes' time I was taken to where other 
prisoners from my regiment and brigade were al- 
ready collected together in a hollow. We were 
quickly robbed of nearly everything we possessed and 
rapidly started down the railroad tracks toward 
Atlanta. While we were there in that little hollow 
General Breckenridge, the ex- Vice President of the 
United States, came in among us prisoners to buy 
a pair of Yankee gauntlets. I sold him mine for fif- 
teen dollars (Confederate money). 

General Grant's victorious army w^as already over 
the Ridge and in rapid pursuit. Taking the Ridge 



110 WITH FIRE A:N^D SWOED 

and Lookout Mountain cost tlie Union army well on 
to six thousand dead and wounded. The Eebels lost 
as many, or more, so that twelve thousand human 
beings were lying dead, or in agony, that night among 
the hills of Chattanooga. Not long before, thirty 
thousand had been killed and wounded, on both sides, 
close to this same Ridge. Forty-two thousand men 
shot for the possession of a single position. That was 
war. 

That night as the guards marched us down the 
railroad we saw train after train whiz by loaded with 
the wounded of the Rebel army. The next day when 
they halted us, to bivouac in the woods, we were 
amazed to see quite a line of Union men from East 
Tennessee marching along in handcuffs. Many of 
them were old men, farmers, whose only crime was 
that they were true to the Union. They were hated 
ten times worse than the soldiers from the North. 
These poor men now were allowed no fire in the 
bivouac, and had almost nothing to eat. '^They will 
everyone be shot or hanged,'' declared the officer of 
our guard to me. I do not know what happened to 
these poor Tennesseeans. Shortly after, we North- 
ern prisoners were put aboard cattle cars and started 
off for Libby Prison at Richmond, most of us never 
to see the North or our homes again. 



CHAPTEE X 

In Libby Prison — Life there — "Belle Isle" — All prisons bad 
— The great escape — "Maryland, My Maryland." 

The story of Libby Prison at Richmond has been 
told so often I shall not dwell on details about it 
here. Besides, the experiences of one man there were 
not materially different from the experiences of an- 
other. I was to stay there some seven months, always 
in the same room, and oftenest denied the poor privi- 
lege of looking out of the window. Onr lives were to 
be very wretched there. That is now a thread-worn 
tale. At their very best, war prisons in every coun- 
try are wretched places. One's friends do not stand 
guard there; it is our enemies. They are not penal 
establishments; they are simply places for keeping 
captives who, until in our so-called civilized days, 
would have been put to death on the battlefield. 

Our little company of captives from Chattanooga 
reached Libby Prison just after daylight of Decem- 
ber 8, 1863. As we crossed the big bridge over the 
James River we looked down into the stream and 
saw "Belle Isle." It was a cold wet sandbar, and 

111 



112 WITH FIEE AND SWOKD 

there, shivering in the wind, we saw five thousand 
ragged and emaciated human beings. They were 
prisoners of war. Some of them were from my own 
regiment. Most of them were never to see their 
homes again. The tales of their experiences would 
stagger human belief. These were all private sol- 
diers ; the commissioned officers were to be locked up 
in Libby Prison. 

The old tobacco warehouse of Libby & Son had 
been transformed into a monster guardhouse for of- 
ficers captured from the Federal army. Little the 
two old tobacco merchants must have dreamed with 
what infamy their names would go down to history, 
through no fault of their own. 

The big brick building stood close to the James 
River. It had no glass in its windows, and the cold 
wind from the bay swept through its vast rooms day 
and night. Six hundred other prisoners were already 
there on our arrival, picked up from many battle- 
fields. 

Libby Prison was three stories high and its floors 
were divided into several rooms each. The prisoners 
slept on the floor, with only old army blankets around 
them. When thus lying down, the floor was entirely 
covered with shivering human beings. Each group 
of half a dozen men had extemporized tables, made 
from old boxes. A few seats were made by cutting 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 113 

barrels in two. At night the seats, and whatever else 
might be there, were piled on top of the tables, while 
the prisoners stretched themselves on the floor to try 
to sleep. In my diary of the time I read: "The 
food doled out to us is miserable and scanty in the 
extreme. A species of corn bread, ground up cobs 
and all, and a little rice form the principal part of 
the ration. The fact that this bread is burned black 
outside and is raw inside renders it more detestable. 
Occasionally letters from the ISTorth reach us by a 
flag of truce, and at very rare intervals a prisoner is 
allowed to receive a little box of coffee, sugar, and 
salt, sent to him by his friends in the [N'orth." 

As the time went on this privilege was denied us. 
The high price of everything South in the war times 
was the flimsy excuse for giving the captured ones so 
little. 

Prices of provisions were indeed terrible in Rich- 
mond. This list I copied from a Richmond paper, 
December 20, 1863 : Bacon, $3 per pound ; potatoes, 
$18 per bushel; turkeys, $25 each; sugar, $3 per 
pound; beef, $1 per ponnd; butter, $5 per pound; 
shad, $84 per pair ; whisky, $75 a gallon. This was 
in the discounted money of the Confederates. 

The beginning of the new year 1864 came in cold 
and gloomy. We could keep warm only by running 
and jumping and pushing each other about the 



114 WITH FIRE AND SWORD 

prison. I was in the upper east room, and had for 
messmates Captains Page and Bascom and Lieuten- 
ants Austin and Hoffman, all of my oa\ti regiment. 
In the little box of provisions sent me by my mother 
in the North was a copy of a Latin grammar, put 
there by good old Professor Drake, my former school- 
teacher. Evidently he thought the mind needed feed- 
ing as well as the body. I took the hint and studied 
the book faithfully. I recited to Major Marshall, 
and eight times I went through this Latin grammar. 
I had nothing else to do, but Latin is no go on an 
empty stomach. When, later, I got out of prison 
Latin was as strange to me as if I had never seen 
a grammar in my life. My memory had been well- 
nigh ruined by my confinement. One day, fearing 
our escape, the authorities put iron bars on all our 
windows. They did not think to put glass in them 
to keep the cold air out. 

On the night of February 10 occurred the famous 
escape of one hundred and nine prisoners. For 
many weeks certain officers had been missing. They 
were in the earth under the prison, digging a tunnel 
to liberty. The length of this secret tunnel, dug 
under the prison, under stone walls, under the street 
and under the very feet of the guards, was eighty-six 
feet. 

Forty-six nights were consumed in digging it. 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 115 

Only certain of the prisoners knew anything about it. 
On the night of the escape I was told of it. I stood 
in the dark at an upper window and watched the 
prisoners as they came out at the farther end of the 
tunnel and slipped away. I did not try to enter the 
tunnel when I heard of it; there was already five 
times as many men in the cellar as could possible get 
away by daylight. As it was, a third of those escap- 
ing were captured and brought back again to the 
prison. 

On the 20th of March some exchanged Confed- 
erates were sent into Richmond under flag of truce. 
The President, Jefferson Davis, and all the digni- 
taries welcomed them. The President also came into 
Libby Prison one day, possibly to see with his own 
eyes and hear with his own ears if all the terrible 
tales of hardship and cruelties occurring there were 
true. Whatever conclusion he may have reached, 
the hard lines of our life in the prison were not visi- 
bly altered. They have been told of a hundred of 
times. 

All the nights now it was very cold. I had but one 
blanket. I, like all the others, slept on the floor, 
and in my clothes, with my boots under my head for 
a pillow. One night, — it was at the close of Feb- 
ruary, 1864, — we in the prison were greatly excited 
over a report that Union cavalry under Generals Kil- 



116 WITH FIKE AND SWOED 

patrick and Dahlgren were making a raid on tlie city 
for the purpose of releasing us. It was raining out- 
side, and very dark, but we were sure we hebird the 
Union cannon close at hand. We thought the hour 
of our deliverance had come. Instantly, but secretly, 
we organized ourselves into bands to break cut and 
help. 

Soon Major Turner, the prison commander, 
came into the prison, making mysterious threats of 
something awful that would happen should we lift 
a single hand. Some negro help about the prison 
whispered to us all that, under Turner's direction, 
they had been compelled to carry thirty kegs of gun- 
powder into the cellar of the prison. Rumor said 
that it was Turner's intention, if our troops should 
get into Richmond, to blow up the prison and destroy 
us. A horrible plan, if true. Sadly for us, the 
great raid proved a failure. Dahlgren was killed, 
and his body was mutilated and exposed to an en- 
raged public at one of the railroad depots in the city. 
These things were not done by honorable Confederate 
soldiers, but by irresponsible home guards and undis- 
ciplined rowdies. 

Now we saw no hopes of ever getting away. We 
would at last all die here, we thought. The nights 
seemed colder than ever; perhaps our blood was 
getting thinner. Some of us played chess ; numbers 



WITH FIRE AISTD SWORD 117 

sat with cards in their hands from early morning till 
bedtime. A few, experts with the knife, made bone 
rings and the like to sell, and so increased their 
rations a little. Generally now the rations were get- 
ting poorer, if such a thing were possible. Many 
prisoners were breaking down and were carried out 
to die. My own health — and I was young and strong 
— was beginning to give way. Once I fell on the 
floor in an utter swoon from weakness and hunger. 
From Andersonville, where the private soldiers were, 
came the horrible reports that "all were dying." 

One day a lot of Marylanders, most of whom had 
run through the Union lines from Baltimore, were 
organized into a battalion called "The Maryland 
Line." They were led by Marshall Wilder. They 
were marched past the prison, singing "Maryland, 
My Maryland." It was the first time I ever heard 
the song sung by Southerners. The music seemed 
to stir the whole city.* 

Great battles were being fought in Virginia, and 
sometimes Grant's soldiers approached close to Rich- 
mond. Before daylight of May 7 our captors, fear- 
ing mutiny and escape, placed all the prisoners in 
cattle cars and hurried us across the Confederacy 

♦Years afterwards I wrote a song to this music myself 
("The Song of Iowa"). To this day it is well known, and 
has become the official State song. 



118 WITH FIKE Al^D SWOED 

to Macon, Ga. For seven long, dreary, awful months 
I had been in one room in Libby Prison, with little 
to eat or wear. It all seems a horrible dream as I 
write of it now. 

]^ow there were rumors that we were to be taken 
to a prison farther South. 



CHAPTER XI 

Escaping from Macon — An adventure in Atlanta — In the 
disguise of a Confederate soldier — My wanderings 
inside the Confederate army and what I experienced 
there — I am captured as a spy — How I got out of it 
all. 

I have related how suddenly we prisoners were 
hurried from Libby Prison in Richmond to the 
town of Macon in Georgia. 

It was now the hot summer of 1864, that summer 
when Sherman, only a hundred and fifty miles from 
our prison, was having a battle every day. He was 
marching and fighting his way to Atlanta. Seven 
hundred of us, all Federal officers, were now penned 
up in a hot stockade. I copy a page from my diary : 

"The walls here at Macon prison are twelve feet 
high. Sentries are posted near the top of them on 
a platform running around the outside. Their orders 
are to shoot any prisoners seen approaching the dead 
line. This dead line is simply marked off by an am 
occasional stake, and is twelve feet inside the sur- 
rounding wall. It is fearfully hot here inside this 
stockade. The ground is pure sand, reflecting the 

119 



120 WITH FIEE AND SWORD 

sun's rays powerfully. We had no cover of any kind' 
at first, save the blankets stretched over pine sticks. 
It is as hot here at Macon as it was cold at Libby 
Prison." 

We tried digging a tunnel by which to escape. It 
was four feet under ground and seventy-five feet 
long. It was barely ready when some spy revealed it, 
and our chance was lost. For my own part, I was 
determined to get away. The food was now again 
horrible, and all kinds of indignities and insults 
were heaped upon the prisoners. One night during 
a hard rain I attempted to escape through a washout 
under the stockade. I remained by the spot till 
nearly midnight, not knowing that I was being 
watched every moment. As I was about to give up 
the attempt and go away Captain Gesner, of a !N'ew 
York regiment, came to the little brook for a cup 
of water. The guard who had been watching me then 
fired, and Gesner dropped dead. They came in with 
lanterns to see who had been killed, and the guard 
who had fired related how he had watched the man 
for nearly two hours trying to escape. I did not dare 
say that it was I, not poor Gesner, who had been 
trying to get away. 

"Now I contemplated, too, a different means of 
escape. It was to get a Rebel uniform, escape from 
the stockade by some means, and enter th? Rebel 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 121 

army in disguise, trusting my chance to get away 
during the first battle. 

There was but one gate or door to the stockade, 
and this door was kept constantly closed. It was 
guarded by a sentinel who stood, gun in hand, im- 
mediately above it while a corporal stood watch be- 
low. Once a day a few guards and officers entered 
this door, closed it behind them, and formed us into 
lines for counting. I had studied a small map of 
the country for days, and by dint of trading tobacco, 
etc., with an occasional guard who was dying for 
the weed I acquired, piece by piece, a pretty decent 
Rebel uniform. This I kept buried in the sand 
where I slept. July 15, 1864, came around. My 
term of enlistment expired that day. I had been in 
the Union army three years ; was it not a good time 
to give the Rebels a trial? There were a few old 
sheds not far from the gate, and in one of these one 
morning about nine o'clock I waited with a friend, 
and saw the sergeants and the guards come in, when 
the bell rang, to count the prisoners. I had resur- 
rected my Rebel uniform and had quietly slipped it 
on. It fitted amazingly. My friend was lingering 
there, simply to see what would become of me. He 
has often declared since then that he expected me 
to be shot the moment I should approach the dead- 
line. 



122 WITH FIKE AND SWOKD 

The prisoners were some wav off, in rows, being 
counted. I stepped from under cover and quickly 
walked up to and over the dead-line by the gate. The 
guard walking above brought his gun from his shoul- 
der, halted, and looked at me. I paid no attention, 
but knocked, when the door opened, and the corporal 
stepped in the opening and asked what I wanted. 
'^The lieutenant misses a roll-list, and I must run 
out and bring it from headquarters," I answered, 
pushing by him hurriedly. There was no time for 
questions, and the corporal, before getting over his 
surprise, had passed me out as a Rebel sergeant. I 
quickly turned the corner, passed a number of 
"Johnnies" sitting on the grass drinking coffee and 
went straight up to the commandent's tent, near the 
edge of the wood, but did not go in. I had not looked 
behind me once, but expected every moment to hear 
a bullet whizzing after me. I passed behind the 
tent, walked slowly into the wood, and then ran my 
best for an hour. 

I was outside of prison. How free, how green, 
how beautiful all things seemed ! It was the joy of 
years in a few minutes. Of course I was instantly 
missed at the roll-call, and bloodhounds were soon 
upon my track. I avoided them, however, by different 
maneuvers. I changed my course, shortly repassed 
the prison pen on the opposite side, and went back 



WITH FIEE AND SWOED 123 

and up into the city of Macon. After wandering 
through its streets for an hour I again took to the 
woods. That night I slept in a swamp of the Ocmul- 
gee Eiver. What hedfellows I had ! — frogs, lizards, 
bats, and alligators. But it was better than the inside 
of a war prison. All the next day I lay in a black- 
berry patch, fearing to move, but feasting on the lus- 
cious, ripe berries. What a contrast it was to my 
previous starving ! Never in this world shall I enjoy 
food so again. 

Near to me was a watering-station for the railway 
to Atlanta. As I lay in the bushes I heard trains 
halting all the day. With night came a glorious 
moon. Such a flood of heaven's own light I had 
never seen before. By ten at night a long, empty 
train halted, and in two minutes I had sprung from 
the bushes and was inside of an empty freight car. 
In ten minutes more I stood in the door of the car 
watching the fair farms and the hamlets of Georgia 
sleeping under the glorious moonlight, while I was 
being hurled along heaven knew where. 

That was the strangest ride of my life. The con- 
ductor came along when we were near Atlanta, swing- 
ing his lantern into the cars, and found a strange 
passenger. He threatened all sorts of things if my 
fare were not paid, of course I had no money, but 
I put myself on my dignity, told him I was a con- 



124 WITH FIEE AISTD SWOED 

valescent soldier coming back from a furlough, and 
dared him or anj other civilian to put me off the 
train. That ended the colloquy, and just before day- 
light the whistle screamed for Atlanta, and I was 
inside the lines of Hood's army. 

I left the train and in a few moments was tucked 
away in the haymow of a barn near the station. So 
far, good ; but daylight brought a squad of Rebel 
cavalry into the barn, who, to my dismay, soon com- 
menced climbing up to the mow for hay for their 
horses. My presence of mind was about leaving me 
utterly when I happened to notice an empty sugar 
hogshead in the corner of the mow. Before the 
Eebels were up I was in it, and there I sat and per- 
spired for six mortal hours. Those hours were days, 
every one of them. All of this time Sherman's army, 
then besieging Atlanta, was throwing shells into our 
neighborhood. At last, at last ! the Eebels saddled 
their horses and rode out of the barnyard. 

I was not long in changing my headquarters. For 
days and days I walked up and down Atlanta among 
the troops, to the troops, away^from the troops, al- 
ways moving, always just going to the regiment, 
to which I had attached myself as ordnance ser- 
geant. I was very careful, however, to keep far 
away from that particular regiment. I knew its 
position, its chief officers, knew, in fact, the position 



WITH FIRE AIv[D SWOED 125 

of every brigade in Hood's army. It was to my inter- 
est, under the circumstances, to know tliem well, for 
I was continually halted with such exclamations as, 
''Hallo! which way? Where's your regiment? 
What you doing away over her© ?" A hundred times 
I was on the point of being arrested and carried to 
my alleged command. For every man I met I had 
a different tale, to suit the circumstances. At night 
I slept where I could — under a tree, behind a dry- 
goods box; it made little difference, as my lying 
down on the ground, hungry, pillowless, and blanket- 
less, and fearing every moment to be arrested, could 
not be called sleeping. This life was growing monot- 
onous at last; the more so as, aside from an occa- 
sional apple, I had nothing at all to eat. 

About the fifth day I overheard an old Irishman, 
hoeing among his potatoes, bitterly reviling the war 
to his wife. I made his acquaintance and discov- 
ered our sentiments as to the rebellion to be very 
nesrly identical. Under the most tremendous of 
oaths as to secrecy, I told who I was and that I was 
absolutely starving. If he would help me, I knew 
how to save his property when Sherman's army 
should enter. That it would ent^r, and that Atlanta 
would be razed to the ground, and every human 
being's throat cut, he had not a doubt. Still, if 
detected in secreting or feeding me, he would be 



126 WITH FIKE AND SWORD 

hanged from his own door-post. There was no doubt- 
ing that, either. 

However, that night I slept in his cellar and was 
fed with more than the crumbs from his table. It 
was arranged that I should wander about the armj 
day-times, and come to his cellar — unknown to him, 
of course — about ten every night, when his family 
were likely to be in bed. The outside door was to be 
left unlocked for me. Prisoners did not carry time- 
pieces in the South. Mine disappeared with my 
'pistols on the battlefield of Chattanooga, and as an 
unfortunate result I went to my den in the cellar an 
hour too early one evening. ]^one of my protector's 
family seemed to have been aware of the guest in the 
cellar. 

I was sitting quietly in a corner of the dark, damp 
place when the trap-door opened above and a young 
lady, bearing a lamp, descended and seemed to be 
searching for something. It was a romantic situa- 
tion — destined to be more so. Groping about the 
cellar, the young lady approached me. I moved 
along the wall to avoid her. She unluckily fol- 
lowed. I moved farther again. She followed, cor- 
nered me, screamed at the top of her voice, dropped 
the lamp, and fainted. In half a minute three sol- 
diers who had happened to be lunching upstairs, 
the old lady, and my friend, her husband, i-ushed 



WITH EIKE AND SWOED 127 

down the steps, armed with lights. The old gentle- 
man recognized me and was in despair. I think I 
too was in despair, but, rightfully or wrongfully, I 
took to mj heels and escaped through the door which 
I had entered, leaving the fainting girl, the despair- 
ing father, and the astonished soldiers to arrange 
matters as they might. The girl recovered, I learned 
years afterward, and her father's house was one of 
the few that escaped the flames when Sherman started 
to the sea. 

From that night on I slept again at the roadsides, 
and as for rations, I might say I did not have any. 
The weather i^vas terribly hot, but I spent my days 
wandering from regiment to regiment and from fort 
to fort, inspecting the positions and the works. I 
knew if I did get through, all this would be equal 
to any army corps for Sherman. 

Once I crept into a little deserted frame house 
and, happening to find an old white palmetto hat 
there, I changed it for my own, on account of the 
heat. I then laid my Rebel jacket and cap under 
the boards and, fastening my pantaloons up with a 
piece of broad red calico that happened to be with 
the hat, sallied out, seeing what I could see. I very 
soon saw more than I had calculated on. I had wan- 
dered well off to the right of the army and was 
quietly looking about when a squad of cavalry dashed 



128 WITH EIKE AND SWOKD 

in, shouting, ''The Yankees are on us V' There was 
a regiment of infantry close bj, which sprang to its 
feet, and every man in sight was ordered to seize a 
gun and hurry to the front. I, too, was picked up, 
and before I had time to explain that I was just 
going over to my division a gun was in my hands and 
I was pushed into the line. The whole force ran for 
a quarter of an hour into the woods, firing as they 
ran, and shouting. Suddenly, as a few shots were 
fired into us, we stopped and formed line of battle. 

The skirmish was soon over. Some cavalry had 
flanked the Yanks and brought them in, and while 
their pockets were being gone through with by my 
fellow-soldiers I slipped to the rear, and was glad to 
get back into my own cap and jacket. 

I lay in the little empty house that night. Sher- 
man's army had been banging at the city fearfully, 
and setting houses on fire all night. It was a little 
revenge, I presume, for the losses in the skirmish in 
which I had taken so pictruesque a part. These 
shelled houses had emptied their occupants into the 
street, and a little after daylight I noticed a family, 
with its worldly baggage piled on a one-mule wagon, 
stop in front of my residence. ''Here's a house out 
of range of bullets. Why not move in V 1 heard a 
manly voice call to the women and children, following 
with the traps. "Move in," I thought to myself. 



WITH FIEE AND SWOKD 129 

'Well, they can stand it, if I can." The house con- 
sisted of hut one large room, nnceiled, and reaching 
to the rafters, with the exception of a small compart- 
ment, finished off and ceiled, in one corner. On top 
of this little compartment were my headquarters. 

In they moved, hag and haggage, and the women 
folks soon commenced preparing a meal outside, under 
the shadows of the front door. This half-finished 
room had heen used as a hutcher shop in the past, 
it seemed, and the meat hooks in the corner had 
served me as a ladder to mount to my perch on the 
ceiling. "N'ow, Johnny," chirped the wife, "do run 
uptown and huy some red and white muslin. We will 
make a Union flag, and when Sherman gits in, as 
he's hound to, we're jest as good Union folks as he 
is. You know I'm dyin' for real coffee. I'm tired 
of chicory and Injun bread, and I don't keer if Sher- 
man's folks is in to-morrow. We'll draw govern- 
ment rations, and be Union." 

These good people were probably "poor trash" of 
the South, not caring much which way the war went 
provided they could get rations. Their general talk, 
however, was of the real Rebel character, and it was 
an unsafe place for me to stop in. In an hour the 
banquet before the front door was prepared, and all 
hands went out to partake. Soon they were joined 
by a Rebel soldier, who seemed to be on a half -hour's 



130 WITH FIRE ANB SWOED 

furlough to visit the young lady of the party, whom I 
took to be his sweetheart. Sherman's army, I was 
sorry to learn from this soldier, was being simply 
"mowed out of existence." "All the woods about 
Atlanta were as a reeking corpse." Sherman himself 
was in flight northward." 

By looking more closely through a chink in the 
weather-boarding of my hiding-place I discovered 
that he w^as reading all this dreadful information 
from a Copperhead newspaper from Chicago, and 
then I felt easier. 

Again, there was the talk about money purses 
made of Yankee's scalps and finger rings from 
Yankee bones ; and during the dinner I was no little 
astonished to see this valiant Southerner exhibit to 
his eager listeners a veritable ring, rough and yellow, 
made, as he said, from the bones of one of Sherman's 
cavalrymen. This was probably brag. 

The banquet of cucumbers, chicory, and Injun 
bread was about terminating. My soldier with the 
ring had used up his furlough and was gone. The 
house was still empty, and it was now, or never, if I 
proposed getting down from my perch witHout alarm. 
My plan was silently to climb down the meat hooks 
which I had ascended and to slip out at the still open 
back door of the house. On peeping over the edge 
of the ceiling, however, what was my amazement 



WITH FIKE A^B SWOKD 131 

to see a bull-dog of immense proportions tied to one 
of mj hooks ! 

Here was a ^'situation" ! He was sound asleep, but 
had an amiable countenance. I dropped a bit of 
plaster on his nose. He looked up amazed, and 
smiled. Then I smiled, and then he smiled again ; 
and then I carefully crept down, patted him on the 
head, said good-bj in a whisper, and in a twinkling 
was out at the back door. My gratitude to this dog 
is boundless. 

I had found it unsafe to be about houses, and again 
I took my lodgings in the field. Again I was busy, 
just going to my division, but never getting there. 
Once, near the sacred quarters of a brigadier, the 
guard arrested me. I protested, and our loud talk 
brought the brigadier to the rescue. I explained how 
I was '^just going to my regiment,'^ and how my 
pass had been lost, and the necessity of my going on 
at once. The brigadier took in the situation at a 
glance, and with a pencil wrote me a pass, good 
for that day. 

Fighting was going on about Atlanta constantly, 
but with so many apparent reverses to our arms that 
I feared I should never get away. 

The memorable 2 2d of July came, and with it the 
most terrific fighting on Hood's right, and in fact all 
round the semi-circle about the city. A divi- 



132 WITH EIKE AND SWOED 

sion, with my Alabama regiment, entered the battle 
on Hood's right wing, and I followed, at a safe dis- 
tance, as an ordnance sergeant. Everybody was too 
busy and excited to ask me questions, and in the hope 
that Hood would be defeated and an opportunity for 
getting through the lines be at last presented, I was 
feeling good. Hundreds, thousand possibly, of 
wounded men fell back by me, but all shouting, 
^^The Yankees are beaten, and McPherson is killed." 

It was too true ! McPherson had fallen and, if re- 
ports were correct, Sherman's army had met with an 
awful disaster. Eor me, there was nothing left but 
to get back to the rear and try another direction. I 
knew that Sherman's advance was at the ford, at 
Sandtown, on the Chattahoochie Eiver, at our left. 
Could I only get there, I might still be saved. I had 
now been seen among the Eebel forts and troops so 
much that there was the greatest danger of my being 
recaptured, and shot as a spy. On the night of the 
2 2d I took refuge under a hedge, near to a field 
hospital. 

'No food and no sleep for dsijs was killing me. 
Still there was no rest, for all the night long I heard 
the groans of the poor fellows whose arms and legs 
were being chopped off by the surgeons. The whole 
night was simply horrible. I might have died there 
myself; I wonder that I did not. Only the hope of 



WITH FIRE AND SWOED 133 

escape was keeping me alive. I had not eaten a pound 
of food in days. 

Daylight of the 23d came. It was my birthday. 
Auspicious day, I thought, and again my hopes gave 
me strength and courage to work my way past lines 
of infantry and cavalry. 

All day, till nearly sunset, I had crept around 
in the woods, avoiding sentinels, and now I was al- 
most in sight of the longed-for goal. It was not a 
mile to the ford. When darkness set in I should 
swim the river and be a free man. More, I had news 
that would help Sherman's army to capture Atlanta. 
A thousand pictures of home, of freedom, peace, were 
painting themselves in my mind. One hour more, 
and all would be well. 

Hark ! a shot, and then a call to halt and hold up 
my arms. I was surrounded in a moment by fifty 
cavalrymen who had been secreted in the bushes — 
how or where I know not. We were in sight of the 
river, and the Union flag was just beyond. It was 
no use here to talk about being a Confederate. I was 
arrested as a spy^ and in great danger of being shot 
then and there, without a hearing. I was partly 
stripped, searched thoroughly, and then marched be- 
tween two cavalrymen to General Ross, of Texas, 
who, with his staff, was also at a hidden point in 
the woods. General Ross treated me kindly and gave 



134 WITH FIKE AIsTD SWOED 

me lunch and a blanket to rest on. It was his duty, 
however, to send me to the division headquarters, to 
be tried. I was again marched till nine at night, 

when I was turned over to General H . He was 

sitting bj a fire in the woods roasting potatoes and 
reviling the Yankees. As I was arrested as a spy, 
and to be tried, I deemed it best to say nothing. 
^'Try to escape from me to-night," shouted General 

H , as if he were commanding an army corps, 

"and I'll put you where there is no more 'scaping." 
Through the whole night a soldier sat at my head 
with a cocked pistol, but for the first time in days 
I slept soundly. Why not? The worst had hap- 
pened. By daylight a guard marched me up to the 
city, where Hood had army headquarters in the yard 
of a private residence. 

On the way there my guard, a mere boy, was com- 
municative, and I persuaded him to show me the 
paper that was being sent around with me, from one 
headquarters to another. I read it. Sure enough, 
I was considered a spy, and was being forwarded for 
trial. The paper gave the hour and place of my 
capture, with the statement that one of those c<iptur- 
ing me had seen me inspecting a fort on the previous 
Sunday. 

When we reached Hood's tents, in the dooryard of 
the Atlanta mansion, T was turned over to a new 



I 



WITH EIKE AKD SWOED 136 

guard, and the document brought with me wa€ care- 
lessly thrown into an open pigeon-hole of a desk out 
on the grass by a clerk who seemed too mnch dis- 
turbed about other matters to ask where the guard 
came from or what I was accused of. I, at least, 
noticed where the paper was put. There was the 
most tremendous excitement at headquarters. Order- 
lies and officers were dashing everywhere at once, 
fighting was constantly going on, and an immediate 
retreat seemed to be determined. I was left that 
night in a tent with a few other prisoners, among 
them two deserters, sentenced to be shot. Close by 
on the lawn was the desk where the clerk had de- 
posited my paper. Our guard was very accommo- 
dating, or very negligent, for he allowed different 
persons to go in and out from our tent at all hours 
during the night. Daylight brought the provost- 
marshal general to the tent, to dispose of the pris- 
oners. The name of each was called, and all but 
myself were taken out, heard, and sent off. 

"And who are you?" he said, pleasantly enough 
to me. I stepped forward. The clerk was asked for 
the paper, but it was gone. "It certainly had been 
misplaced," said the clerk, in embarrassment. He 
had put it in that particular pigeon-hole. I testified 
to that myself, and added, — ^this sudden inspiration 
coming to me in the emergency, — that "it was of 



136 WITH FIRE AND SWOED 

little consequence, as it was from an officer, — I didn't 
know whom, — who had simply picked me up as an 
escaped prisoner." The provost-marshal took me 
aside and asked me if I had been about the works or 
the troops any. I told him my name, that I was 
really an escaped prisoner, and that I had just walked 
up from Macon and had hoped to get away. "You 
have had a hard time of it," he said, "and I almost 
wish you had got away. I hope you will soon be 
free," he added, "and that the cruel war is almost 
over." It was a sudden and great relief to me to 
know that now^ I was not to be regarded as a spy. 
What became of the "papers" and the charges against 
me afterward in the midst of war excitements, I 
never knew. The next night the provost-marshal sent 
me under guard back to Macon prison whence I had 
escaped. 



CHAPTER XII 

Under fire of our own guns at Charleston — Trying to cap- 
ture a railway train — The secret band — Betrayed — 
The desolation of Charleston. 

I was scarcely returned to the Macon prison again 
when two hundred of us, all officers, were selected to 
be placed under the fire from our navy then bom- 
barding Charleston. By some wonderful fiction of 
military law the ''Confederates," as the Rebels called 
themselves, pretended to regard the bombardment of 
Charleston as a crime. I do not remember now how 
the selection of victims to be sent to Charleston was 
made one evening about the end of July, 1864. 
This, however, happened that night, to add adven- 
ture and excitement to the Charleston trip. The 
greater number of those selected were members of a 
"Secret Band" of prisoners who had resolved to 
mutiny or to do any act in our power that could 
result in our escape from captivity. I recall how 
Major Marshall one afternoon secretly administered 
to me the oath of this desperate band. With my hand 
on my heart I swore to instantly obey every order 

137 



138 WITH FIRE AND SWORD 

given to me bj the ^'liead captain." I was to ask no 
questions, but to strike, whenever told; to kill, no 
matter whom, even were my own brother to be the 
victim. I was ready to do anything. I had been 
mistreated and starved long enough. Death could be 
little worse than all of us had been undergoing for 
months. The news coming to us from our prison com- 
rades at Andersonville was perfectly horrible. His- 
tory had never related the like of it. We received the 
Telegraph, a Macon newspaper, into the prison pen 
every morning. At the head of one of its columns 
each day the editor reported the awful number of 
poor starving creatures who had died at Anderson- 
ville the day before. It was not unlike the reports 
of the number of dumb beasts killed each day in the 
Chicago slaughter pens. Pretty soon I learned that 
the eighty comrades of my regiment captured with 
me at Missionary Ridge were nearly every one dead. 
The details of their sufferings were too horrible to 
dilate upon. We wondered sometimes if god had 

FORSAKEN THE WORLD. 

We who joined the ^'Band,'' and took the awful 
oath we did, knew what it all meant. Outside our 
stockade loaded cannon waited but the least alarm 
to fire upon us. On top of the stockade guards walked 
day and night with orders to instantly kill any pris- 
oner who should approach within twelve feet of the 



WITH FIRE AI^D SWORD 139 

high wall. We were only eight hundred prisoners all 
told, and nothing to fight Avith bnt naked hands. Out- 
side whole regiments armed to the teeth lav with guns 
in their hands waiting to destroy every onk of us 
should we offer to escape. What was our chance? 
Almost nothing ; or if anything, death ! Still we 
resolved to try. 

Then came that night when we were to get on 
the cars and start for Charleston. Instantly the 
word was passed along for every member of the 
secret "Band" to quietly arm himself with a short 
club, made from our bunks and sheds, and to keep 
it hid under his coat or blanket. 'Now we were 
counted and put into a train of box cattle cars. 
Twenty-five prisoners were in a car, and in the side 
door of each car stood a guard with his loaded mus- 
ket. We who were not leaders of the "Band" won- 
dered what desperate thing we were about to try. 
I do not know where the tools came from, but when 
the train was well in motion, and the noise deadened 
our movements, a big hole, large enough to permit 
a man to creep through, was knocked in the end of 
each car. The darkness, the crowd in the cars and 
the noise prevented the guards knowing what was 
going on. This was the first ''vestibule'' railroad 
train ever made. 

Shortly now one of our leaders came creeping 



140 WITH FIKE AISTD SWOED 

along from car to car, and in a low voice lie told us 
what was about to happen. The train on its way to 
Charleston would halt close to the sea at a little town 
called Pocotaligo. We knew that some ships of the 
Union navy lay out in the water there, scarce a 
dozen miles away. The design was to seize on our 
guards as we reached the village, disarm them, kill 
them, if necessary, ditch the train, destroy the road 
and the telegraph, and then escape to the ships. I 
think not a soul of us doubted the likelihood of our 
success. We would be free men on the morrow if all 
went well. It would be two or three o'clock in the 
night when the train would pass the point of action. 
Every one of us had his club and his pocket knife 
in his hand ready to strike. At the proper moment 

Colonel , our leader, with three comrades, was 

to spring through the end of the front car where he 
was, onto the tender, seize the engineer and fireman 
and wave a lantern violently as a signal for us to 
suddenly lay hold of every Rebel soldier on the 
train. Ten miles out from Pocotaligo our hearts 
beat in terrible excitement. "No one spoke; we only 
waited. It was silence, all save the rumbling of the 
car wheels. So far our guards seemed in perfect 
ignorance of the approaching danger. Five miles 
out, so sure were we of success, a few began to act 
without waiting for the signal. In one or two of the 



WITH FIEE AND SWOKD 141 

cars the guards had been suddenly seized and their 
muskets were in our hands. In the car where I was, 
one of the astonished guards, finding himself with- 
out a gun, coolly said : ''And what are you 'uns going 
to do with we 'uns ?" It was a tremendous moment, 
as the train sped along in the dark. Three miles 
to Pocotaligo; two miles; one mile. With quick 
beating heart I leaned from our car door, straining 
my eyes for the lantern signal. Then the whistle 
blew loudly, but the train only hastened its speed, 
and in two minutes, instead of stopping, we shot 
past the station at lightning speed. 

What had happened ? Were we discovered ? Not 
a signal had been given to us. In the morning we 
were all hurried inside the jail yard of Charleston. 
Now we knew it all. At the crucial moment our 
leader had lost his nerve and become a coward; or 
had he betrayed us ? He had not waved the lantern, 
though he had captured it, and held it in his hand. 
We were now much alarmed as to what would be 
done with us for seizing the guards. We might lose 

our lives. Colonel , the false leader, was taken 

to another prison to save him from being torn to 
pieces by his own comrades. 

The newspapers of Charleston that morning con- 
tained flaming articles, describing how^ a terrible 
catastrophe had been averted by the cowardice or 



142 WITH FIRE AND SWOED 

treason of one man. Where they got the details of 
the proposed capture of the train, no one will ever 
know. Was the leader simply a coward, or was he 
paid for betraying ns ? 

After a while we were transferred to what was 
called the "Hoper Hospital." It was close to the 
jail, and the danger of being killed by the shells 
from our own fleet was still very great, though, in 
fact, few of us were hurt. The yellow fever was 
to be a greater scourge than Yankee cannon. 

Our fleet officers had learned the locality where the 
prisoners were guarded, and fired their shells mostly 
in other directions. It was a grand spectacle at 
night— the soaring through the heavens of so many 
blazing bombshells and their bursting in the city. 
Parts of Charleston that we could see were perfect 
pictures of desolation ; whole quarters stood in black 
ruins and iminhabited. The weather was exceed- 
ingly hot, and the yellow fever broke out and raged 
fearfully among both prisoners and guards. It 
seemed as if we should all die there. At last they 
transported us away to a little open field in the 
woods, close to the town of Columbia, the capital of 
South Carolina. 

The surgeon of the prison camp at Charleston was 
Dr. Todd, a brother of President Lincoln's wife. A 
more rabid Secessionist was nowhere to be found. 



WITH FIRE AND SWOED 143 

It was a curious situation, that the brother-in-law of 
the great President should be so attached to the 
country's opponents. 

On our way to the prison at Columbia Major 
Marshall of my regiment and two captains escaped 
from the train and reached the North by tramping 
at night through the mountains of North Carolina 
and Tennessee. They had horrible experiences for 
many weeks. 



CHAPTEE XIII 

Living in a grave — An adventure in the woods of South 
Carolina — Life in the asylum yard at the capital of 
South Carolina — The song of "Sherman's March to the 
Sea" — How it came to be written — Final escape — The 
burning up of South Carolina's capital. 

l^JTow we were near the capital of South Carolina. 
It is our third prison. We were placed in a cleared 
field among the pine woods, a few miles from the 
town. Here we spent a part of a terrihle winter ex- 
posed to the storm and rain. We had no shelter 
save such as we made at last of sticks and logs that 
we were allowed to carry in from the neighboring 
wood. Our food was wretched, we had almost no 
clothing, and the weather was very bad nearly all 
the time. We were surrounded by a line of guards. 
A battery constantly in readiness to fire on us 
should an alarm be given stood near by. Our food 
was still the half -cooked corn and cobs together, with 
quantities of a poor and sickly sorghum molasses. 
We heard that the Rebel army was living little bet- 
ter than we were. In ridicule of the rations the 
prisoners dubbed this prison pen "Camp Sorghum." 

144 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 145 

Every man among us was sick with diarrhoea. The 
little grave-yard for the prisoners near by grew 
rapidly. The details of our life in this miserable 
camp I shall not relate. They were simply too hor- 
rible. As for myself, — my only shelter was a hole 
in the ground, four feet deep, four feet wide and 
eight feet long. It was covered with boughs and 
earth. Lieutenant Morris and myself occupied this 
living grave for months. We had a tiny fire-place 
of clay built in the end of it, where we burned roots, 
and the long rainy nights we two sat there alone, 
reading an old newspaper by our root-light or talk- 
ing of our far-away homes. One very stormy night 
our water-soaked roof fell in on us, and then we were 
compelled to walk about in the rain. I wonder now 
that any soul survived the miseries of that camp. 
Valley Forge was paradise compared to it. But all 
this misery was a part of war. 

Naturally, numbers ran the guard lines at this 
woeful prison pen and escaped into the woods. Fir- 
ing by the sentinels on these escaping prisoners was 
a common occurrence on dark nights. Here and 
there an officer was killed, and sometimes under cir- 
cumstances that marked the sentinel a common mur- 
derer. A battery of loaded cannons stood outside the 
guard line, with orders to open on the prisoners 
should five musket shots be heard. With the con- 



146 WITH FIEE AND SWOKD 

stant escaping of prisoners at niglit these ^ve fatal 
shots could occur at any hour. 

For my own part, I resolved to again attempt es- 
cape, but my efforts failed again, and twice in suc- 
cession. I recall with a shudder how one night late 
in November my friend, Lieutenant Ecking of New 
York, was foully murdered. He had bribed a guard 
to let two or three of us rim across the line that night 
at midnight. The bribe was to consist of a silver 
watch. Some of these men were easily bribed. They 
were not regular Confederate soldiers, but usually 
cowardly home guards, who regarded the murdering 
of a helpless prisoner a heroic act. 

When midnight came three of us were secreted 
close to the dead line. As soon as the bribe-l senti- 
nel came to his post and commenced walking up and 
down his beat Lieutenant Ecking rose and ap- 
proached him. The night was clear moonlight. 
The moment Ecking had crossed the dead line, and 
was holding the watch up to the guard, the coward 
shot him dead. For this outrage the home i2ruard 
received a furlough. 

About this time, too. Lieutenant Turbayne was 
murdered by a guard for mistaking the ringing of a 
bell. Some of us had been permitted to go out on 
parole and carry in wood at stated times. Without 
notice, tbis privilege was suspended, but the bellman. 



WITH FIEJE AND SWOKD 14Y 

by mistake, rang as usual. Turbayne started for the 
dead line. ''Go back, halt!'' shouted a sentinel. 
Turbayne turned to obey, but was instantly shot in 
the back and dropped dead. There was a furious 
commotion among the prisoners. The guards, too, 
collected about the spot. The Rebel officer in charge 
left his lunch and walked over also. He held in his 
hand a great piece of pumpkin pie, and continued 
eating from it as he stood there by the corpse of the 
man they had murdered. There was almost a mutiny 
in the prison camp, and one proper leader at that 
moment would have put an end to the whole Rebel 
outfit. In the end it would have been death to the 
whole of lis. 

Previous to this threatened outbreak I had again 
tried my own chance at escaping. It was now No- 
vember 4, 1864, a cold blustering day, and the pris- 
oners in their rags and almost barefooted stood and 
shivered in the naked field. At four o'clock a dozen 
were paroled and allowed to go out to the woods and 
carry in some fuel. 

Lieutenant Fritchie and myself managed to mix 
ourselves among this little paroled company, and 
forgot to return to the enclosure. We helped a little 
in the fuel getting, and then suddenly disappeared in 
the pine forests. For some days we crept about in 
the great pine woods, scarcely knowing our direc- 



148 WITH FIKE AND SWOED 

tion or wliere we were going. Our leaving Lad been 
so sudden that we were planless. Here and there 
we stumbled onto a darkej, who never hesitated to 
bring us corn hoe cake or whatever eatables he might 
happen to have in his cabin. The slaves universally 
were the prisoners' friends, and they knew a hun- 
dred times more about the war and its object than 
their plantation masters ever supposed. Many an es- 
caping prisoner was fed by them and, with the north 
star as a guide, conducted to safety. Many an army 
movement was made possible by loyal negroes. 
Barring an occasional Union white man, they were 
the only friends the soldiers had in the South. 

Lieutenant Fritchie and I had some queer adven- 
tures while we wandered about the woods of South 
Carolina during this little leave of absence from the 
Confederates. We did not see a single white man, 
save one, and he tried to shoot us. One night we 
lodged in an open-topped corn-crib, not knowing in 
the darkness that we were quite close to an in- 
habited farmhouse. When daylight came we peeped 
over the corn-crib and were much astonished to see 
a woman at her wash-tub on the back porch of a 
cabin close by. She must have seen our heads, for 
that very moment she stopped her washing and en- 
tered the cabin. Shortly she appeared again, fol- 
lowed by a man, who took one long steady look at the 



WITH FIKE AI^D SWOED 149 

corn-crib; then lie entered the cabin, and we knew 
it was to get his gun. Very quick resolution and ac- 
tion on our part became advisable. A little plowed 
field only separated our corn-crib, at the back, from 
a thick piece of woods. In a moment the man was 
out again on the porch, bearing a musket. 

"Drop to the ground behind the crib and run to 
the woods," said Fritchie. "I'll keep watch on the 
man. I'll drop down too. When you are across 
wave your hand if he is not coming, and then I'll 
run." In a moment's time I was running across the 
plowed field, keeping the crib between me and the 
porch of the cabin. The man with the musket never 
saw me. I waved to Fritchie ; he, too, started on the 
run, and to this hour I laugh to myself when I picture 
to my mind Fritchie, a short, stumpy fellow, tum- 
bling absolutely heels over head in his haste to cover 
that bit of plowed ground. 

Very shortly we heard bloodhounds bellowing. 
We knew too well what that meant. I^umbers of es- 
caping prisoners had been torn to pieces by them. 
That was the common way of catching runaway 
slaves and prisoners of war down South. They hunt 
"niggers" that way to-day down there. 

By hard running, turns and counter-turns, and 
frequent crossing and recrossing little streams, we 
threw the dogs off our track, and slept until night 



150 WITH FIKE AND SWORD 

in the thicket. The wind blew hard and cold that 
night, and as we stood secreted under a thorn-tree 
by the roadside two men passed, so close we could 
have touched them. Something told us they, too, 
were escaping prisoners. We tried to attract their 
attention enough to be sure. One of us spoke, 
scarcely more than w^hisper. Instantly and in alarm 
the two men bounded away like scared wolves. Days 
afterward we found out that they had been not only 
fleeing prisoners, but were, indeed, two of owv per- 
sonal friends. 

The next night was fair, and a full round moon 
lighted up the sandy desert, with its oasis of tall, im- 
mense pine trees. The white winding road of sand 
that seemed to have been . abandoned for a hundred 
years was almost trackless. Here and there, too, 
we saw an abandoned turpentine camp, the spiles 
still in the trees and the troughs lying rotting at 
their feet. 

There was nothing but silence there, and loneli- 
ness, and moonlight. Here in the quiet night, if 
any^vhere in the world, two poor escaping prisoners 
of war would be in no danger of a foe. 

For hours we trudged along, going where we 
knew not, when suddenly to our amazement two 
mounted cavalrymen stood right in our way and 
called to us to surrender. There w^as nothing to do 



WITH FIEE AND SWOED 151 

but to obey. Our capture had been an accident. 
These two officers, a captain and a lieutenant, had 
been riding the country trying to catch some desert- 
ers from their army and had blundered on to us. 
They started with us to Lexington jail, some miles 
away. The captain rode a dozen yards or so ahead, 
with a revolver in his hand. I trudged along in the 
sand at his side, faithfully hanging on to his stirrup 
strap. The lieutenant and Fritchie followed us in a 
like manner in the moonlight. It seems to have been 
a romantic occasion, when I think of it now ; we two 
Federals and these two Confederates, there alone 
in the moonlight, and the big pine trees and the 
white sands about. I could not help reflecting, 
though, how many a captured prisoner had never 
been accounted for. Possibly we should never see 
Lexington jail. It would be an easy thing for these 
men to leave our bodies there in the sand some- 
where. There were few words at first as we plodded 
our slow way in the moonlight. At last my captain 
and I entered into lively conversation about the 
South in general, and then both of us hoped the 
war w^ould soon come to an end. To my surprise 
the young captain confided to me that he was, at 
heart, a Union man. "And why in the Confederate 
army?" I asked, in astonishment. "Because," said 
the captain, "everybody in my village in South 



162 WITH FIKE A:N'D SWOED 

Carolina is. I would have been hooted to death had 
I remained at home. Mj father is a rich man; he 
is opposed to the war, but he, too, is in the service 
at Kichmond." 

"Under the circumstances,'' I said, "I being 
Union, and you being Union, why not look the other 
way a moment and let me try the time required to 
reach yonder clump of trees." "ISTo, not a thought 
of it," he answered almost hotly. "You are my 
prisoner, I will do my duty." The subject was 
dropped, and in half an hour Fritchie and I were 
inside a stone cell in Lexington jail. "You can lie 
down on the stone floor and sleep if you want to," 
the jailer said, crustily. The two young officers said 
a cheery good-by and went away. 

Before daybreak the door of our cell opened again 
and the gruff jailer called, "Which of you is Adju- 
tant Byers." Then he pushed a basket and blanket 
in to me, and a little note. The basket was full of 
good warm food and the little note, in a woman's 
hand, said: "With the compliments of the captain's 
wife." 

I think tears came to the eyes of both of us 
there in that cell that night. It was among the few 
kindnesses I ever experienced in the Confederacy. 
Of course it was a woman's act. The captain had 
gone to his home near by and told his wife about 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 153 

his prisoners, and here was the remembrance. The 
world is not so bad after all, we said to each other, 
Fritchie and I. 

The next day the jailer paraded us out in the 
corridor, and I think all the people in the county 
came to see us, to remark on us, and touch us with 
their hands. Most of these men, women, and chil- 
dren had absolutely never seen a Northern man be- 
fore, and a Yankee soldier was a greater curiosity 
than a whole menagerie of polar bears. I saw the 
ignorance of the "poor white trash" of the South 
that day. Not one in twenty of them knew what the 
war was about. The negroes had a more intelligent 
notion of affairs than did the people of the Oaro- 
linas. 

In a few days Fritchie and I were conducted back 
to our prison pen near Columbia, South Carolina, 

Shortly they moved us once more. This time to 
the high-walled yard of the lunatic asylum, inside 
the city. As they marched us through the streets 
we could see how beautiful the little capital of 
South Carolina was. It had handsome shops and 
residences, and beautiful shade trees everywhere 
gave it a most attractive appearance. It was almost 
the best known city of the South and here the fatal 
heresy of secession had been born. As we went along 
the streets a mob of people gathered around us, hoot- 



154 WITH FIEE AND SWOKD 

ing and hissing their hatred at ns, just as they had 
done that first time we were taken through the town. 
A few wanted the guards to give them a chance to 
hang us. It was a sorry sight — this band of ragged, 
helpless, hungry loyalists being led like slaves and 
animals through the hooting, threatening crowd. 
That mob, thirsting for our blood, did not dream 
what was about to happen. 

Here now in Columbia we were walled in just 
as we had been at Macon, and our lives continued 
in much the same hardship as before. Only here I 
do not recall that any prisoner was murdered. It is 
right to say, too, that the outrages so often com- 
mitted on prisoners here and elsewhere in the South 
were not by the regular Confederate soldiers, but 
by home guards usually set over us. It seems now, 
when I recall it, that life was not quite so bad here. 
We soon had some boards given us; so we built 
sheds to live in. As for myself, I, with three or four 
comrades, lived in a little wedge tent. It was very 
cold and midwinter now. I scarcely slept at night, 
but walked about to keep warm. It was on one of 
these midnight tramps that it occurred to me to 
write the song, ^'Sherman's March to the Sea." I 
recur to it here because it gave its name to the great 
campaign it celebrates. 

The story of how it came to be written cannot 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 155 

perhaps be wholly without interest. During the days 
that Sherman's army was tramping from Atlanta to- 
ward Savannah we prisoners were not permitted to 
have any news from the outside of any kind what- 
ever. There was a fear that if we knew what was 
going on a mutiny might follow. We were constantly 
being told by our guards that Sherman's invading 
army was being headed off or destroyed. In the be- 
ginning we feared these stories to be true, but the 
uneasy actions and sullen looks of our captors soon 
began to belie their statements. As said, three or 
four of us prisoners occupied a little wedge tent. 
A negro had recently been allowed to come into the 
prison pen mornings to sell bread to those who had 
any money with which to buy. Our little mess got 
a small loaf now every morning; not more for the 
bread, though we needed that badly enough, than for 
a certain little roll of paper carefully hidden away 
in the middle of the loaf. It was a Columbia morn- 
ing newspaper printed on soft thin paper and of ex- 
tremely small size. Our loyal negro had easily 
enough been persuaded to hide a copy of this paper 
in the bread for us as often as he could have the 
chance unobserved. A knowing wink from him told 
us when to eat our loaf of bread inside the tent and 
with one of us watching at the door while another 
read in a low voice the news from the invading 



156 WITH FIRE AND SWORD 

army. The paper rolled up was not larger than a 
walnut. 

It was full of misrepresentations and reports of 
disasters to Sherman, to mislead the Georgians and 
lessen their alarm. Yet between the lines we easily 
enough read that Sherman was surely marching on, 
and victorious. His columns were coming nearer to 
us ; and how we longed night and day that he might 
capture the prison ! At last we saw that there was 
no hope. He was passing us, — though, but many 
miles away. 

Then one morning, when we unrolled the little 
paper in the bread and read it, we knew that lie had 
reached the sea. Savannah had fallen. The con- 
sternation of the Southerners was tremendous. But, 
next, they pretended that they could box Sherman up 
in Savannah and capture his whole army. 

One December night when I was tramping up and 
down the prison pen in the dark, trying to keep 
warm, I reflected on the tremendous importance of 
what Sherman had done. And I wondered what so 
curious a campaign would be called. It was not a 
series of battles — it was a great march. And then 
the title, and almost the words, of the song came to 
me. 

The next morning when my tent comrades were 
out of doors shivering over a little fire I remained 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 157 

in our little heap of straw, and completed the 
verses. 

I went out to the fire and read them to mj com- 
rades. A Lieutenant Rockwell happened to be pres- 
ent and asked permission to make a copy of the 
verses. He, with many others, slept on the ground 
under the hospital building. One had to crawl on 
his hands and knees to enter there. There was a 
most capable Glee Club among the officers, and they 
had by some means secured a flute, violins, and bass 
viol for accompaniments. They kept their instru- 
ments under the house, too, where they slept. 

Every afternoon this Glee Club was permitted to 
sing and play on the little elevated porch of the 
hospital. The only condition was that Southern 
songs should be sung, not less than Northern songs. 
There was no trouble about that. The songs of our 
captors were better than no songs. Besides, these 
singers made music. All the crowd of prisoners, 
eight hundred now, often stood in front of the little 
porch to enjoy the singing. Almost hundreds of the 
Rebels, too^ together with many ladies of Columbia, 
climbed up onto the walls, where the guards stood, 
and applauded the singers as much as any. 

One drizzly afternoon I was standing by a little 
persimmon tree in the midst of the crowd listening 
to the songs, when Major Isett, leader of the Glee 



168 WITH PIKE AND SWOKD 

Club, said: "Now we will have a song about Sher- 
man.'' To mj astonishment, it was mj ''Sherman's 
March to the Sea." 

It was received in a tremendous fashion. Every- 
body cheered and hurrahed. The news of Sherman's 
victories was fresh upon them. In five minutes' time 
the good fortune of mj song was settled. The name 
of the author was loudly called for; someone saw 
me by the little tree, and I was quickly hauled to the 
front and up onto the platform. In a few moments 
an unknown officer among the many prisoners became 
a sort of prison hero. 

Everybody wanted the song, everybody sang it; 
and clever penmen made a good thing making copies 
at twenty dollars apiece. Confederate money. As a 
little compliment to me the captain of the prison 
allowed me to sleep on the floor of the hospital 
room. To me that was important, as shall appear. 
Later in this narrative, too, will be seen how an ex- 
changed prisoner, by the name of Tower, who had 
an artificial leg, carried the song in this wooden 
limb through the lines to our soldiers in the North, 
where it was sung everywhere and with demonstra- 
tion. In a week it had given its name to the cam- 
paign, and a million copies of it soon passed into 
circulation. 

Lieutenant Rockwell, Avho had asked my leave to 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 159 

copy the verses tliat first morning, was a composer, 
and there in the dust under the old hospital he had, 
unknown to me, written the first music to which the 
song was ever sung. Later, it had many other set- 
tings, but that one, though difficult, remained the 
best. The song has often since been sung to the air 
of ^'The Red, White, and Blue." This is the history 
of the song, which I print here as a part of this nar- 
rative. 

SHERMAN'S MARCH TO THE SEA 

Our camp fires shone bright on the mountains 

That frowned on the river below, 
While we stood by our guns in the morning 

And eagerly watched for the foe — 
When a rider came out- from the darkness 

That hung over mountain and tree. 
And shouted, "Boys, up and be ready. 

For Sherman will march to the sea." 

Then cheer upon cheer for bold Sherman 

Went up from each valley and glen. 
And the bugles re-echoed the music 

That came from the lips of the men. 
For we knew that the stars in our banner 

More bright in their splendor would be. 
And that blessings from Northland would greet us 

When Sherman marched down to the sea. 



160 WITH FIEE AND SWOKD 

Then forward, boys, forward to battle. 

We marched on our wearisome way. 
And we stormed the wild hills of Resaca, — 

God bless those who fell on that day — 
Then Kenesaw, dark in its glory, 

Frowned down on the flag of the free, 
But the East and the West bore our standards, 

And Sherman marched on to the sea. 

Still onward we pressed, till our banners 

Swept out from Atlanta's grim walls, 
And the blood of the patriot dampened 

The soil where the traitor flag falls; 
But we paused not to weep for the fallen, 

Who slept by each river and tree; 
Yet we twined them a wreath of the laurel 

As Sherman marched down to the sea. 

O, proud was our army that morning 

That stood where the pine darkly towers, 
When Sherman said: "Boys, you are weary. 

This day fair Savannah is ours." 
Then sang we a song for our chieftain 

That echoed over river and lea. 
And the stars in our banner shown brighter 

When Sherman marched down to the sea. 

[Sherman's March to the Sea. — From Eggleston's 
Famous War Ballads. — General Sherman, in a recent con- 
versation with the editor of this collection, declared that it 
was this poem with its phrase, "march to the sea," that 



WITH FIEE AND SWOKD 161 

threw a glamour of romance over the campaign which it 
celebrates. Said General Sherman: "The thing was noth- 
ing more or less than a change of hase; an operation per- 
fectly familiar to every military man, but a poet got hold 
of it, gave it the captivating label, 'The March to the Sea,' 
and the unmilitary public made a romance out of it." It 
may be remarked that the General's modesty overlooks the 
important fact that the romance lay really in his own deed 
of derring-do; the poet merely recorded it, or at most inter- 
preted it to the popular intelligence. The glory of the great 
campaign was Sherman's and his army's; the joy of cele- 
brating it was the poet's; the admiring memory of it is the 
people's. — Editor.] 

As stated, I slept nights now on the floor of the 
prison hospital. This added comfort, however, did 
not tempt me to stay in prison, if I conld get away. 
Once more we heard that the prisoners were to be 
carted away to some safer place, out of the line of 
Sherman's army, now turned North and moving 
rapidly toward us. A night or two before this move 
of prisoners really commenced Lieutenant Devine of 
Philadelphia joined me in an effort to get away. 
The walls of the least used room of the hospital were 
made of joined boards. By the use of an old case 
knife, hacked into a saw, or auger, we managed to 
cut a hole sufficiently large to permit us to pull our- 
selves through and out into an attic above a little 
porch. We repaired the boards as best we could and 



162 WITH riKE AISTD SWOED 

crept out into tlie dark hole. It was the attic of the 
same porch on which our Glee Club stood when they 
sang my song. It was a little cramped up place we 
were in, where we could neither sit erect nor lie at 
full length. There were no guards inside the prison 
hospital; the night was very dark; the sick pris- 
oners seemed to be sleeping. A dim lamp hung from 
the ceiling. We were not detected. The next night 
at midnight, when the prisoners were being marched 
away, two of them were missing. What a night and 
day and part of another night that was for us, 
crooked and cramped as we wTre, in the top of that 
little porch. 

At the next midnight, when every soul, prisoners, 
guards and all, seemed to be gone far away and dead 
silence was upon the place, Devine and I crept down 
from our hiding place. The big gate was closed and 
locked. By the aid of a scantling I managed to get 
up onto the high brick wall. My surprise was im- 
mense to see guards waiting for us outside, and to 
know that we were discovered. One of the sriiards 
rushed up to his post at the top of the wall, but he 
was too late to shoot; we were already in hiding 
among the empty board huts and barracks.* 

♦When springing down from the top of that wall I lost 
my shoes — I had had them in my hand. T also let fall 
from my pocket the pages of this diary. I could not think 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 163 

In a moment tlie big gate opened and a hundred 
men rushed in, looking for the escaping Yankees. 
They howled, they cursed at us, they set the bar- 
racks on fire. Then amid the melee and excitement 
in the dark my comrade and myself pulled our gray 
blankets about us, picked up a water bucket each, and 
pushed up to the guard at the gate. We were "go- 
ing for water,'' we said. "The lieutenant says the 
fire must be put out." Without waiting a reply we 
hurried out in the darkness. There were some vain 
shots after us. 

Shortly we heard the tramp of horses coming to- 
ward us. A friendly culvert in the road into which 
we dodged afforded us protection while a whole 
company of Johnny Rebs rode over our heads. What 
would they have thought, that night, had they known 
it as they went skipping along with arms and jin- 
gling sabers, to confront Sherman's advance guards ? 

We were gone. After a while, in the outskirts of 
the city, we saw a light in a cabin and a negro walk- 
ing up and down by the window. Every negro we 
knew to be a loyal friend. This one we called out 
among some rose bushes in the dooryard. Instantly, 
and without fear, we told him who we were and that 

of losing them, and at the risk of my life I slipped over 
the dead line and from under the guard's very feet, I 
snatched them up and ran hehind one of the huts. 



164 WITH FIEE AND SWOKD 

we were in his power. There is not a question but 
he would have been well rewarded had he betrayed 
us to the Confederate soldiers in the city that night. 
Few words were spoken. That morning two escaped 
prisoners were secreted under some bean stalks in the 
garret of the negro's cabin. The negro's sick wife 
lay in the single room below. Had we been dis- 
covered now that negro would have been hanged from 
his own door lintel. And well he knew it. 

Sherman's army was already pounding at the gates 
of the town. He was crossing the river and his 
shells reached to the capital. This much we knew 
from what we could hear in the yard below, for the 
negro's cabin stood at the edge of a green lawn, 
where General Chestnut had his headquarters. We 
broke a little hole through the siding of the house, 
and now could see what the general and his staff 
were doing. We also could hear much that was said. 
Once we thought ourselves discovered, for we ob- 
served two or three of the general's negro servants 
standing in a group on the grass looking steadily to- 
ward the spot where our little improvised window 
was. What on earth were they looking at? 

It was not much the old negro could give us to 
eat. A little dried beef and some cold corn bread ; 
that was all, save that once he brought us a gallon 
of buttermilk. He had no cow, but he would not 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 165 

tell US where this, to us, heavenly nectar had come 
from. 

There was much hurrying of officers back and 
forth at General Chestnut's headquarters, and plainly 
we could see there was great excitement. Our own 
negro was kept going back and forth into the town 
to pick up for us whatever news he could of the 
fight going on at the river. After awhile the cannon- 
ading grew louder, and it seemed to us the conflict 
must be right at the outskirts of the town. Then 
we saw General Chestnut hurriedly ride on to the 
headquarter's lawn, and we distinctly heard him say 
to an officer, "Sherman has got a bridge down. The 
game's up. We must evacuate." In a few minutes 
the sound of the guns increased, and then we saw 
General Chestnut call his slaves to him to bid them 
farewell. It was a touching scene, amid the dramatic 
surroundings. He seemed very kind, and some of 
them in their ignorance wept. "You will be free," 
he said. "Be good." I thought, he too was affected 
as he mounted his horse and, followed by his staff, 
rode away. He was hardly out of sight when our 
negro protector came running toward the cabin. He 
was tremendously excited. A tall, old cylinder hat 
he had picked up on the way was on his head, his 
eyes bulged out, his hands waved like windmills ; h© 
was celebrating. In a moment the black face and the 



166 WITH FIEE AND SWORD 

cylinder hat shot up the ladder and through the 
hatch-way to where we were. 

"God Almighty be thanked!" he cried in a loud 
voice. "Massa, the Stars and Stripes are waving 
above the capital of South Carolina. Praise to the 
God Almighty!" 

Sure enough, Union troops, had entered, and a 
flag from my own State had been run up on the 
State House. Instantly we bade him hurry and bring 
some Union soldiers to us. In his absence Devine 
and I st^od shaking each other's hands and thanking 
God for our deliverance. I^o slave who had his 
chains knocked oif that day by the coming of the 
Union army felt more thankful than we, freed from 
the wretchedness and horrors of fifteen months of im- 
prisonment. !N'ow we could see the Confederate 
cavalry evacuating the town. Whole companies 
passed, each trooper having a sheaf of oats slung to 
his saddle bow. Shortly our black friend returned, 
and with him two Union soldiers. "It is time to 
drink, boys," they cried out, as they fairly forced us 
to partake of the whisky in their canteens. When 
we all went down into the yard I was sure we would 
be recaptured, for the "Rebel rear-guard was passing 
close to our cabin. The flying troops, however, had 
fish of their own to fry, and were in too much haste 
to be looking after us. l^ow, too, we were sur- 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 167 

rounded by General Chestnut's black servants, who 
were hopping about, giving thanks for their freedom. 
I asked one of them what it was they had been look- 
ing at so attentively the day before, when I had 
seen them gazing right at our hiding-place. ^'Ha 
ha ! massa ! we just knowed you was up there all the 
time. Reckon you didn't like that ar buttermilk 
what we'uns sent you." Our negro friend then had 
made confidents of them, and we had been fed, with- 
out knowing it, on some of the good things from 
General Chestnut's kitchen. Should the general ever 
read this little book, I hope he will cease wondering 
what became of his buttermilk that day at Columbia. 

"Now, our two soldiers escorted us to a street where 
some of the army had halted and stacked arms. A 
Union flag hung over a stack of muskets, and no hu- 
man being will ever know with what thankful heart- 
beatings and tears we gathered its silken folds into 
our arms, l^ow we knew that we were free. The ter- 
rible days were indeed over, and God's rainbow illu- 
mined our sky. 

In half an hour the victorious veterans of Sher- 
man's army, their great leader riding before, with 
bands playins: and banners flying, entered the cap- 
tured city. My comrade and I stood on a high door- 
step and saw them pass. Someone pointed us out to 
Sherman, and for a moment the whole moving army 



168 WITH FIEE AND SWORD 

was halted till he greeted the freed prisoners. We 
two comrades lived a month in that short seventeenth 
day of February, 1865, in Columbia. I think we 
shook hands with a thousand soldiers, even with 
many soldiers we had never seen before. It seemed 
to us that everybody must be as glad to see us as we 
were to see them. 

That night Columbia was burned to the ground 
amid untold horrors. The conflagration had com- 
menced from bales of cotton that the enemy had fired 
and left in the street to prevent falling into the 
Union hands. A big wind rose toward evening and 
the burning cotton flakes were flying all over the 
city. It was a terrible spectacle that night. My 
comrade and I walked about the streets till nearly 
morning. Whole squares and streets were crumbling 
to ashes and tall buildings tumbled down everywhere. 
Here and there, too, there was a terrific explosion. 
It was Moscow done over on a smaller scale. A di- 
vision of Union troops, under Hazen, was sent into 
the town to fight the flames and to arrest every man 
discovered firing houses or walking around without 
a pass. So it happened that my comrade and myself, 
though but innocent spectators, were at midnight ar- 
rested and taken to provost headquarters. We very 
soon explained ourselves and were released and sent 
to comfortable quarters, Avhere we slept till late the 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 169 

next day. It was four nights since we had had any 
sleep at all. 

Bnt the sights of that awful night will never fade 
from my memory. Most of the citizens of Columbia 
had sons or relations in the Rebel army. Half of 
them were dead, the army itself was flying every- 
where, and in the blackness of this terrible night 
their fortunes were all lost, their homes were all 
burning up. Many wandered about wringing their 
hands and crying; some sat stolid and speechless in 
the street watching everything that they had go to 
destruction. A few wandered around, wholly de- 
mented. Some of the invading soldiers tried earnestly 
to extinguish the flames; others broke into houses 
and added to the conflagration. Numbers of the 
Federal prisoners, who only a few weeks before had 
been marched through the streets like felons, had es- 
caped, and what average human nature led them to 
do never will be known. There were fearful things 
going on everywhere. It was reported that an ex- 
plosion occurred in one house and that twenty-four 
soldiers, carousing there, were lost in the ruins. 
Most of the people of Columbia would have been will- 
ing to have died that night, then and there. What 
had they left to live for? This, too, was war. 

When the army entered in the afternoon, Lieuten- 
ant Devine and I, as related, stood on the high steps 



170 WITH FIEE AND SWOED 

of a mansion and watclied it pass. Shortly after a 

very charming young woman, a Mrs. C j seeing 

us, came down and invited us into her father's house 
and gave us food. It was the first real food we had 
had for many, many months. The lady's father was 
a rich jeweler, and, though a Southerner, was a Union 
man. Tier own husband, however, was somewhere 
in the Southern army. My comrade and I spent an 
entertaining hour in the mansion, and then went and 
walked about the city. 

At six o'clock the awful cry, "The to^vn is burn- 
ing up, the town is burning up!" was heard every- 
where. Devine and I at once thought of Mrs. C 

and our friends of the afternoon, and hurried to their 
home to offer help. The flames were already across 

the street from there. Mrs. C' 's father was 

weeping in the drawing-room. Once he took me by 
the arm and led me to where we could see his own 
business establishment burning to the ground. "There 
goes the savings of a life," said he, in bitterness. 
"There is what the curse of secession has done for us ; 
there is what Wade Hampton and the other political 
firebrands have done for South Carolina." My com- 
rade and I at once began carrying some of the more 
valuable goods out of the house for them, doing 
everything possible to help them save some remnant 
from their beautiful and luxurious home. We ran 



WITH FIKE AND SWOED 171 

up and down the mansion stairs nntil we were almost 
dead with exhaustion. Everything we could save 
we piled into a phaeton that stood by the yard. Once 
the lady cried that her child w^as still in the house, 
burning up. Her shrieks pierced even the noise of 
that fearful night. Her alarm was without cause, 
for I soon found the child safe in the arms of a faith- 
ful slave nurse. She had simply carried it out of 
danger. 

When the walls of the house seemed about to 
fall, Devine and I took the loaded bugs^y, he pulling 
in the shafts, I pushing behind, and, followed by the 
weeping family on foot, we drew it for a mile or 
more to the outer ed2:e of the town. Here we left 
them in safety by a little wood, yet not knowina: if 
we would ever see them again. Many of our soldiers 
were burnt up that night. 

The next day Sherman's army left the ruins of 
the city behind them and marched away. They had, 
however, left supplies of rations for their unfortu- 
nate enemies. A train of emr>ty wasrons was also 
furnished for those fugitives who wished to follow 
the army and work their way !N'orth. Hundreds, 
possibly thousands, left the smoking ruins of their 
homes and traveled along with us in every conceiv- 
able conveyance that was heard of. Black and white, 
slave and free, rich and 7")Oor, joined in the proces- 



172 WITH FIRE AND SWOED 

sion behind the army. Mrs. C and her father's 

family were among them. 

I now tried to find my regiment. It was gone. 
Many battles and many marches had so decimated it 
that the little fragment left had been disbanded and 
transferred into a regiment of cavalry. 

Colonel Si] shy, of the Tenth Iowa, offered me a 
place with his mess. I accepted. The Colonel, as 
it happened, had charge of perhaps a hundred pris- 
oners, captured on the march, l^aturally, I was in- 
terested to go among them. I soon saw how much 
better they fared than I had done when in Southern 
hands. Two or three of them, as it happened, had 
been among the guards who had treated us so badly 
while we were in the prison known as "Camp Sor- 
ghum," outside of Columbia. They were perfectly 
terrified when they learned that I had been there 
under their charge. They seemed to fear instant and 
awful retaliation; but I thought of nothing of the 
kind. I was too glad just to be free to be thinking 
of any vengeance. 

A curious incident now happened. This was the 
discovery, among these prisoners, of the husband 

of the young Mrs. C who had given us food in 

Columbia and whose belongings I and my comrade 
had tried to save. He was overjoyed to learn from 
me that his wife and child were at least alive. I in- 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 173 

stantly went to General Logan, and related to him how 
this man's family had been kind to me the day that 
I escaped. I had no trouble in securing his release. 
It was at Logan's headquarters, too, that I had se- 
cured money and an order for provisions to give to 
Edward Edwards, the black man who had been the 
means of my final rescue. His sick wife had kept 
him behind, else he would have followed the army. 
We left him in Columbia. Years later, as a sign 
of my gratitude toward this slave, I dedicated a 
little volume to him, in which I had described my 
prison life. 



CHA^TEE XIV 

The army in the Carolinas — General Sherman sends for 
me — Gives me a place on his staff — Experiences at 
army headquarters — Shermatfs life on the march — 
Music at headquarters — Logan's violin — The General's 
false friend — The army wades, swims, and fights 
through the Carolinas — I am sent as a despatch bearer 
to General Grant — A strange ride down the Cape Fear 
River in the night — General Terry — Learn that my 
song "The March to the Sea" is sung through the 
North, and has given the campaign its name — I bring 
the first news of Sherman's successes to the North — 
An interview with General Grant. 

It was on this inarch in tlie Carolinas that General 
Sherman sent for me to come to army headquarters. 
We were two days away from Columbia. I was 
ashamed to go in my prison rags, so I waited. The 
next day the request was repeated, and Major ISTichols 
of the staff came and said, ^^But you must go, it is 
an order." And I went. The General was sitting 
by a little rail fire in front of his tent, reading a 
newspaper, when we approached his bivouac in the 
woods. I was introduced. He at once told me how 
pleased he had been with my song, that I had written 
in prison about his army. Devine had given him a 

174 



WITH riKE AND SWOKD 175 

copy at that time when he halted his column to 
greet us by the door-step at Columbia. '*Our boys 
shall all sing this song," he said; "and as for you, 
I shall give you a position on my staff. To-morrow 
you will be furnished a horse and all that you need ; 
and you must mess with me.'' 

It would be very hard to express my feelings at 
this sudden transition from a prisoner in rags to a 
post at the headquarters of the great commander. I 
was almost overcome, but General Sherman's extreme 
kindness of manner and speech at last put me partly 
at my ease. Shortly a big colored man, in a green 
coat, announced dinner. "Come," said the General, 
pushing me ahead of him into a tent, where a num- 
ber of handsomely uniformed staff officers stood 
around a table waiting his approach. I was still in 
my rags. I could not help noticing the curious 
glances of the fine gentlemen, who doubtless were 
wondering what General Sherman had picked up 
now. 

My embarrassment was extreme. The commander 
however soon told them who I was, gave me the seat 
at his right hand, and almost his entire conversation 
at the table was directed to me. The officers of the 
staff quickly took the General's cue, and I was soon 
an object of interest, even to them. 

He directed a hundred questions to me as to the 



176 WITH riKE AND SWOED 

general treatment of war prisoners in the South, and 
he, as well as the staff, interested themselves in all 
the details of my ©scape. Telling the story very 
60on relieved me of my embarrassment as to my 
clothes. The horrible tales of Southern prison pens, 
however, was nothing new to General Sherman, for 
he related to me some of the awful things he had 
heard of Andersonville while his army was at At- 
lanta. 

"At one time," said he, "I had great hopes of 
rescuing all of them at one quick blow. I gave 
General Stoneman a large body of cavalry, with di- 
rections to raid down about Macon. This raid was 
to go farther, and, by a quick, secret dash capture 
Andersonville and release every prisoner there. It 
was a chance to do the noblest deed of the war, but 
it all failed miserably. Stoneman had not fully 
obeyed orders, and, instead of releasing a whole army 
of suffering captives, he got captured himself, and, 
with him, a lot of my best cavalry." 

It happened that I saw General Stoneman the 
very day he was brought to the prison. My narrative 
of how by desperately bold and violent cursing he 
denounced and defied his captors, and everything in 
Eebeldom, greatly amused Sherman and all at the 
table. 

Stoneman's awful language and flashing eyes 



WITH FIKE AND SWOKD 177 

did indeed fairly intimidate the officer in charge. 
Evidently lie tlionght he had captured a tiger. It was 
a wonder Stoneman was not killed. 

The conversation ahout the prisoners continued. 
Twenty-five thousand of them were starving and dy- 
ing in Andersonville. ''It is one of the awful fates of 
war," said the General. ''It can't be helped; they 
would have been better off had all been killed on 
the battlefield; and one almost wishes they had 
been." After a pause, he continued. "At times, I 
am almost satisfied it would be just as well to hill 
all prisoners/^ The remark, to me, a prisoner just 
escaped, seemed shocking. I am sure he noticed it, 
for he soon added: "They would be spared these 
atrocities. Besides, the more aivful you can make 
war the sooner it will he oyer/' 

It would, after all, be a mercy. 

^^War is hell, at the best/' he went on, half in 
anger, and using an expression common to him. 

For the moment I thought him heartless, but 
other remarks made to me, and to the staff, soon told 
us that whatever the cruelties imposed on him as a 
commander, they were executed with heart-pain and 
only as plain duty for the salvation of his own 
army. He even talked of how glad he would be to 
be out of the whole blood v business, once the Union 



178 WITH FIKE AND SWORD 

were restored. But if the rebellion continued all his 
life, he would stay and fight it out. 

When the dinner was over each looked about him 
to find some garment to give me. This one had an 
extra coat, that one a pair of trousers, and anotiier 
one a hat. In short I w^as quickly attired in a rather 
respectable uniform. 

This matter was just about ended when a beautiful 
woman was conducted to Sherman, to ask protection 
for her home, that was in his line of march. She 
was "true blue Union," despite her surroundings. 
In a moment the whole atmosphere about the tent 
was chansred. The red-handed warrior, who a mo- 
ment before was ready to kill even prisoners, sud- 
denlv became the most amiable, the most gallant and 
kni2:htly looking man I ever saw. Beauty, that can 
draw a soldier with a single hair, had ensnared the 
srreat commander. He had becom.e a s'entle knifyht. 
The whole arm v. if need be, would stand stock still 
to do her one little favor. T now recall how long 
after the war T noticed a hundred times this per- 
fectly kniarhtly gallantry of Sherman toward all 
women. 

This one particular woman seemed a hundred 
times more beautiful, more fascinating, there in the 
srreen wood alone, with an armv of a hundred thou- 



WITH EIEE AND SWOKD 179 

sand strangers about her, when, pointing her hand 
toward a great banner that swung in the wind be- 
tween two tali pines, she smiled and cried; ''(jreneral 
Sherman, that is my iti^ag too/' There was a 
clapping of hands from all of us, and any one of 
us would have been glad to be sent as the protector 
of her home. 

The great army was now marching, or rather 
swimming and wading, in the direction of Eayette- 
ville, iN. O. There were heavy rains and the coun- 
try, naturally swampy, was Hooded everywhere. I 
soon learned from the staff where the army had al- 
ready been. After the end of the march to the sea 
and the capture of Savannah, Sherman had started 
in with sixty thousand men, to treat South Carolina 
in the manner he had treated Georgia — ^march 
through it and desolate it. His proposed march 
northward from Savannah was regarded by the 
Southern generals as an impossibility. The ob- 
stacles were so great as to make it a hundred times 
as difficult as his march from Atlanta to the sea. 
But he led a great army of picked veterans, accus- 
tomed to everything, whose flags had almost never 
known defeat. Their confidence in their general and 
in themselves w^as simply absolute. So far, in their 
march from Savannah they had hesitated at nothing. 



180 WITH riEE AND SWOKD 

It was midwinter, and yet that army had often 
waded in swamps with the cold water waist deep, 
carrying their clothes and their muskets on their 
heads. Half the roads they followed had to be cor- 
duroyed, or their horses would all have been lost in 
the bottomless mire and swamps. Often their artil- 
lery was for miles pulled along by the men themselves, 
and that in the face of the enemy, hidden behind 
every stream, and ready to ambush them at every 
roadside. Over all these infamous wagon roads, 
across all these bridgeless rivers and endless swamps, 
our army now dragged with it a train of sixty-nine 
cannon, twenty-five hundred six-mule wagons, and six 
hundred ambulances. The tremendous obstacles they 
encountered before reaching Columbia they were 
again to encounter beyond. Not a bridge was left 
on any creek or river in the Carolinas. Roads were 
built of poles and logs through swamps ten miles 
wide. Sherman's army had few rations and no 
tents. The foragers brought in all the food they 
could pick up near the line of march. The little 
rubber blankets the soldiers carried were their sole 
protection from storm. They were almost shoeless. 
There were not a dozen full tents in the army. 
Officers used tent flies sometimes, but oftener simply 
rolled themselves up in their blankets, as their men 
did. At army headquarters we had but one large 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 181 

tent, used generally for dining under ; so we usually 
slept in deserted cabins at the roadside. 

I recall one fearfully stormy night when the 
General and his staff had all crept into a little 
church we found in the woods. The General would 
not accept the bit of carpet one of us had improvised 
into a bed for him on the pulpit platform. "No/' 
he said, "keep that for some of you young fellows 
who are not well." He then stretched himself out 
on a wooden bench for the night. I think he never 
removed his uniform during the campaign. Day 
and night he was alert, and seemed never to be 
really asleep. We of the staff now had little to do 
save carrying orders occasionally to other com- 
manders. 

General Sherman did most of his own writing, 
and he wrote a rapid, beautiful hand. We had 
breakfast by the light of the campfire almost every 
morning, and were immediately in the saddle, 
floundering along through the mud, always near to, 
or quite at, the head of the army. At noon we 
always dismounted and ate a simple lunch at the 
roadside, sometimes washed down by a little whisky. 
jSTow and then some one of the army, recognizing the 
General riding past, would give a cheer that would 
be taken up by brigades and divisions a mile away. 
There seemed to be something peculiar about this 



182 WITH riEE AND SWOKD 

Sherman cheer, for soldiers far oflf would cry out: 
^^Listen to them cheering Billy Sherman." 

On the 3d of March we took Cher aw, and twenty- 
four cannon, also nearly four thousand barrels of 
gunpowder. That day General Logan, General 
Howard, General Kilpatrick, General Hazen, and 
many other notables came to headquarters. There 
was a jolly time of rejoicing. 

Here General Logan, who could play the violin, 
entertained them by singing my song of "Sherman's 
March to the Sea," accompanying his voice with the 
instrument. A dozen famous generals joined in the 
chorus. After the singing, Logan insisted that I 
should also recite the poem. I did so, meeting with 
great applause from the very men who had been the 
leaders in the great "March." Alas ! save one or 
two, they are now all dead. 

Among the captures that day had been eight 
wagonloads of fine, old wine. It was now dis- 
tributed among the different headquarters of the 
Union army, and as a result some of the said head- 
quarters were pretty nearly drunk. One of our 
staff, at dinner the next day, attempted to explain 
his condition of the day before. "E'ever mind ex- 
plaininc:," said General Sherman crustily, and with- 
out looking up, "but only see that the like of that 
does not happen again ; that is all." That staff 



WITH riKE AND SWOKD 183 

officer was a very sober man the rest of the cam- 
paign. 

While we were lying there in Cheraw we heard 
an awful explosion; the very earth shook. I sup- 
posed it to be an earthquake until a messenger 
brought word that a lot of captured gunpowder had 
exploded and killed and w^ounded twenty soldiers. 

As we were crossing on our pontoons over the 
Pedee River at Cheraw I noticed a singular way of 
punishing army thieves. An offender of this kind 
stood on the bridge, guarded by two sentinels. He 
was inside of a barrel that had the ends knocked out. 
On the barrel in big letters were the words: "I am 
a thief." The whole army corps passed close by 
him. An occasional man indulged in some joke at 
his expense, but the body of soldiers affected not tO' 
see him. The day we entered Cheraw General 
Sherman and his staff rode through the country alone 
for ten miles, going across from one column to an- 
other. It was a hazardous ride, as the whole 
country was full of guerrillas. But nothing of note 
happened to us. 

On the 8th of March the headquarters staff was 
bivouacked in the woods near Laurel Hill. The 
nrmy was absolutely cut off from every^vhere. It 
had no base; it was weeks since Sherman had heard 
from the !N'orth or since the !N'orth had heard from 



184: WITH FIRE AND SWOED 

him. E'ow he resolved to try to get a courier with 
a message through to Wilmington, at the seaside. 
An experienced spy by the name of Pike was selected 
to float down the Cape Fear Eiver to ask the com- 
mander to try to send a tugboat up, to communicate 
with the army. I did not know then that the next 
one to run down Cape Fear Eiver would be myself. 

In four days we had taken Fayetteville and its 
wonderful arsenal, built years before by the 
American people, and where now half the war 
supplies of the Eebel army were made. 

When the General and his staff first rode into 
Fayetteville headquarters were established in the 
arsenal. The General, wishing to look about the 
town for an hour or so, left me in charge. The other 
officers rode away with him. Very shortly a well- 
dressed, fine-looking old Southerner came to me and 
complained that his home was being disturbed by 
some of our soldiers. He was, he said, an old West 
Point friend of General Sherman's. While waiting 
the return of the commander, he regaled me with 
incidents of their early days together in the !N'orth 
and with his intimacies with one who would now 
doubtless be overwhelmed with joy at seeing him. 
He begged me to observe what would be his re- 
ception when the General should come. Impressed 
by his conversation, I at once sent a soldier or two 
to guard his home. 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 185 

Shortly after General Sherman rode in through 
the arsenal portal and dismounted. The Southerner 
advanced with ojoen arms, and for a moment there 
was a ray of pleasure illuminating Sherman^s face. 
Then he went and leaned against a column, and, 
turning to the Southerner, said, "Yes, we were long 
together, weren't we?'' "Yes," answered the 
Southerner, delighted. "You shared my friendship, 
shared my bread, even, didn't you?" continued 
Sherman. "Indeed, indeed !" the Southerner re- 
plied, with increasing warmth. The General gave 
the Southerner a long, steady, almost pathetic look, 
and answered, "You have betrayed it all; me, your 
friend, your country that educated you for its de- 
fense. You are here a traitor, and you ask me to 
be again your friend, to protect your property, to 
send you these brave men, some of whose comrades 
were murdered by your neighbors this very morning 
■ — fired on from hidden houses by you and yours as 
they entered the town. Turn your back to me for- 
ever. I will not punish you; only go your way. 
There is room in the world even for traitors." The 
Southerner turned ashy white and walked away 
from us in silence. Sherman sat down with the rest 
of us to our noonday lunch. We sat about the portal 
on stones, or barrels, or whatever happened to 
answer for seats. The General could scarcely eat. 
l^ever had I seen him under such emotion; the 



186 WITH FIKE AND SWORD 

corners of his mouth twitched as he continued talk- 
ing to us of this false friend. The hand that held 
the hread trembled and for a moment tears were in 
his eyes. lor a little while we all sat in silence, 
and we realized as never before what treason to the 
republic really meant. The General spoke as if he, 
nor we, might ever live through it all. 

Very soon General Howard rode in to complain 
anew of the outrages committed on our troops by 
men firing from windows as they passed along the 
streets. Two or three soldiers had been killed. 
*'Who did this outrage?" cried Sherman, in a loud 
and bitter voice. ''Texans, I think,'' answered 
General Howard. ^^Then shoot some Texan pris- 
oners in retaliation,'' said Sherman sternly. ^'We 
have no Texans," replied Howard, not inclined, 
apparently, to carry out the serious, but just order. 
^'Then take other prisoners, take any prisoners," 
continued General Sherman. "I will not permit 
my soldiers to be murdered." He turned on his 
heel and walked away. Howard mounted and rode 
into the town. What happened, I do not know. 

On Sunday morning General Sherman asked me 
to take a walk with him through the immense arsenal 
of Fayetteville before he should blow it up. We 
were gone an hour, and I was surprised at his great 
familiarity with all the machinery and works of the 



WITH FIKE AND SWOED 187 

immense establishment. He talked constantly and 
explained many things to me. l^ever more than at 
that time was I impressed with the universal 
knowledge, the extraordinary genius, of the man. 
There seemed to be nothing there he did not under- 
stand. On our way back to headquarters I heard 
him give the order to destroy everything, to bum 
the arsenal down, blow it up, to leave absolutely 
nothing, and he added the prayer that the American 
government miofht never again give ITorth Carolina 
an arsenal and forts to betray. He was very ansrry 
now at those who had used the United States 
property in their desire to destroy the firovernment 
itself. He had seen nothino* in the war thnt seemed 
so treasonable, unless it was the base ino^ratitude of 
those who entered the service of the Eebellion after 
bavins: been educated at West Point at the Govern- 
ment's expense. 

Pretty soon he said to me : "If I can get any kind 
of a boat ur> here, T am going to have you try to 
7'each Wilmington with dispatcher." Almost at that 
minute a steam whistle sounded in the woods below 
us. "There it is," said the General joyfully. "Pike 
?ot through." Very soon someone came running to 
say a commjinication had come from the seashore; a 
little tug had run the Pebel gaunlet all the way from 
Wilm inert on. 



188 WITH riKE AND SWOKD 

We went in to lunch and tlie General announced 
to the staff his intention of sending me down the 
river, and off to General Grant with dispatches. 
This chance to get word of his movements and his 
successes to General Grant and the North was of 
vast importance, and it moved him greatly. He left 
his lunch half finished and commenced writing 
letters and reports to the commander-in-chief. That 
evening at twilight General Sherman walked with 
me down to the riverside where the little tug lay 
waiting. "When you reach the North/' he said, 
putting his arm around me, "don't tell them we 
have been cutting any great swath in the Carolinas ; 
simply tell them the plain facts; tell them that the 
army is not lost, hut is well, and still marching." 
So careful was I as to his injunctions, that even the 
newspapers at Washington never knew how the great 
news from Sherman reached the North. 

I did not know then, startin.^ down the river with 
my message, that it was to he seven years before I 
was again to see the face of my beloved commander. 

The Cape Fear River was flooded at this time, 
a mile wide, in places even more, and though its 
banks were lined with guerrillas there could not be 
great danger, if we could stay in the middle of the 
stream, unless our little boat should get wrecked in 
the darkness bv flostinfi: trees or bv running into 



WITH FIKE AND SWOKD 189 

shallow places. The lights were all put out. The 
pilot house and the sides of the boat were covered 
by bales of cotton, to protect us against the Rebel 
bullets. My dispatches to General Grant were care- 
fully sewed up inside my shirt, and were weighted, 
so that I could hastily sink them in the river should 
we be captured. A half dozen refugees from 
Columbia joined us. Among them was the Mrs. 

C , whose property Devine and I had tried to 

save the night of the fire. It was a curious and 
dangerous voyage down that roaring, flooded river 
for a woman to be undertaking in the darkness, but 
this woman had now undertaken many dangers. 
Another of my companions on that strange voyage 
was Theodore Davis, a corresponding artist of 
Harper s Weekly. We kept the boat in the channel 
as far as we could guess it, and, for the rest, simply 
floated in the darkness. We went through undis- 
covered ; not a shot fired at us. Before daylight, so 
swift had been the current, we were in Wilmington. 
General Terry had just taken Wilmington and 
was in command of the city. Some of my dis- 
patches were for him. He was still in bed, in one 
of the fine residences of the place, but instantly 
arose and urged me to jump into bed and get some 
rest while he should arrange to get me immediate 
transportation to Grant. I slept till nine, and when 



190 WITH FIRE AND SWORD 

I came down to the drawing-room, now used as 
headquarters, General Terry asked if perhaps it 
were I who wrote the song about Sherman's March 
from Atlanta seaward. It had been sung at the 
theater the night before, he said. I was much 
gratified to have him tell me that the whole army 
had taken it up. ^^Tens of thousands of men," he 
said, ^Vere singing it." I knew, as already told, 
that an exchanged prisoner had brought the song 
through the Rebel lines in an artificial leg he 
wore, but it was an agreeable surprise to now learn 
of its sudden and tremendous success. 

General Terry impressed me as the handsomest 
soldier I had seen in the army — McPherson, the 
commander of my own corp, only excepted. He was, 
too, a refined and perfect gentleman. Looking at 
hin- T thought of the cavaliers of romance. Here 
was real knighthood, born and bred in the soil of the 
republic. The laurels for his heroic capture of Fort 
Fisher were fresh on his brow. 

Before noon an ocean steamer, the Edward 
Everett, was ordered to take m© at once to Fortress 
Monroe. Two of my army friends went along. The 
captain, leaving on so short notice, had provided his 
ship with insufficient ballast, and to me, a landsman, 
the vessel's lurchings were very astonishing. I had 
never seen the ocean before, and it was not long till 



WITH FIEE AND SWOED 191 

I wished I might never see it again. To add to my 
alarm, a fierce tempest sprang up as we passed 
around Cape Hatteras, and the danger was no longer 
imaginary, but very real. The few passengers on 
the boat might as well have been dead, so far as 
any self-help was to be thought of in case of disas- 
ter. Even the captain was very seasick, and, alto- 
gether, passengers and crew were badly scared. For 
many hours it was nothing but a fierce blow and a 
roll about on the mad waters. All things come to 
an end; so did this storm, and at last we reached 
Fortress Monroe, where I was hurriedly transferred 
by some sailors in a yawl over to a boat that had 
already started up the James toward Richmond. Our 
captain had signaled that he had a dispatch bearer 
from the Carolinas. We had not gone far until we 
passed the top of a ship's mast sticking a few feet 
above the water. It was the mast of the \. amber- 
land^ that had gone down in her fight with the 
Merrimac with as brave a crew as ever manned a 
war boat. 

The steamer I was now on was crowded with 
ofiicers in bright uniforms, apparently returning to 
their regiments. I w^ondered if all the Eastern 
army had been home on a furlough. I could not 
help contrasting to myself this ship full of sleek, 
brightly uniformed officers with the rough-clad 



192 WITH FIEE AND SWOED 

soldiers and officers of tlie army of Sherman. Sher- 
man's foragers and veterans of the March to the 
Sea might have cut an awkward figure alongside 
these gay youths just from Washington. 

In the afternoon the ship came to at City Point, 
and I climbed up the bank of the river bluff for 
perhaps a hundred feet, and was soon directed to 
the headquarters of the cammander-in-chief of the 
United States armies. 

When I reached the open door of Grant's famous 
little cabin a young officer asked me to come in, and 
was introducing me to the chief of staff, Rawlins, 
who stood there with some letters in his hands. 
That instant General Grant showed his face at the 
door in the back of the room. I knew who it was 
at once. He stepped forward to where General 
Rawlins was speaking with me, listened to the con- 
versation a moment, and without any formal intro- 
duction, smiled, took me by the hand and led me 
into the back room of the cabin shutting the door 
behind us. He asked me to sit down, but I first 
proceeded to rip the dispatches out of my clothing, 
and with intense interest watched his features while 
he sat on a camp stool by the window, his legs 
crossed, and read Sherman's letter. I could see the 
glow of silent satisfaction as he glanced along the 
lines that told of his great lieutenant's successes in 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 193 

the Soutli. He glanced at another letter I held in 
my hand. ^^It is for the President," I said. "He 
will be here jet to-night/' he answered. "His boat 
must now be coming up the bay." 

Then General Grant questioned me as to all I 
knew about Sherman's army, the character of the 
opposition he had met, the condition of his soldiers, 
their clothing, the roads, the weather. He also asked 
me how I had reached him with the dispatches, 
coming all the way from the interior of North 
Carolina. He seemed to have thought for a mo- 
ment that I had come across Virginia on foot. He 
wanted to know of me again about the terrible treat- 
ment of prisoners in the South. What I told him 
only "confirmed," he said, what he had heard from 
a hundred sources. 

Very shortly he heard the voice of General Ord 
in the outer room. 

"Come in here, Ord," he said, holding the door 
open. "Come in and hear the news from Sherman. 
Look at that, listen to this," and again he went 
through Sherman's letter, reading parts of it aloud. 
"Good ! Good !" cried Ord, fairly dancing about the 
cabin, his spurs and saber jingling. "T was really 
getting afraid." "Not T, not I, not a bit," ex- 
claimed Grant enthusiastically, as he rose to his 
feet. ''I Jcnerv my man. I hnew General Sherman," 



194 WITH EIKE AND SWOED 

I was astonished now at the simple and perfectly 
frank manner with which General Grant talked to 
me about the situation of the anny. I had ventured 
to ask if there was any outlook for the immediate 
fall of Richmond or a battle. 

"Yery great," he answered. "I am only afraid 
Lee may slip out before we can get a great blow at 
him. Any hour this may happen." Just then there 
was cannonading. I wondered if a fight were com- 
mencing somewhere in the line already. General 
Grant did not change a muscle in his face. "Send 
out and see what the firing is," he said to an officer 
quietly, and then as quietly continued talkin.qr, 
asking me to tell him all T knew of a recent escapade 
of TCilpatrick and his cavalry. It happened that I 
knew all about it. Only a couple of weeks before 
Kilpatrick and his headquarters had been surprised 
in bed at a bivouac on the flank of Sherman's army, 
and were surrounded and some were captured. By 
a heroic struggle the cavalry leader had escaped his 
captors, had instantly rallied his troops there in the 
dark woods and given the bold Rebels a little drub- 
bing. The next day I had been with Sherman at 
headquarters and listened to Kilpatrick's recital of 
his adventure. My own narration of the mVht's 
cavalry fisrht, reciting how the cavalrymen and his 
aids dashed about with nothing on but their shirts, 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 195 

made General Grant smile very audibly. ''I had 
expected the whole thing to be about as you say/' 
he exclaimed, in a grateful way, ^'but the Richmond 
newspapers which fell into my hands made a big 
thing of the so-called capture of Sherman's cavalry 
leader." 

Once, as the General rose and stood directly in 
front of us, I was astonished to see how small he 
seemed. I had seen Grant before, but on horseback 
or in battle, and, somehow, I had always regarded 
him as a rather large, solidly built man. To-day in 
the little back room of his cabin, talking with him, 
I saw how mistaken I had been. General Grant, as 
I now saw him, was, in fact, a little man. Several 
times he rose and walked about the room. He was 
not more than five feet seven or eight inches high, 
and he could not have weighed more than one hun- 
dred and forty or fifty pounds. He wore a simple 
fatigue uniform, and his coat thrown open gave him 
the appearance of being larger chested than he really 
was. His brown hair was neither short nor long, 
and he wore a full beard, well trimmed. Had I not 
known to whom I was talking, or had I not seen 
the three stars on his shoulders, I would have sup- 
posed myself in the presence of some simple army 
captain. There was nothing whatever about him to 
announce the presence of genius or extraordinary 



196 WITH FIEE AND SWOKD 

ability of any kind. He was in no sense a striking- 
looking man. His manner and words to me were 
kind and earnest. There was an agreeable look 
about his mouth and eyes that made him seem very 
sincere. Indeed, if any one thing about him im- 
pressed me more than another, it was his apparent 
sincerity and earnestness. And he looked to me 
like a man of great common sense. Of vanity, pre- 
tence, or power there was not a single sign. He 
could not have looked very greatly different when 
he was hewing logs for his house at his father-in- 
law's farm ten years before, from what he looked 
just now, quietly directing a million soldiers in the 
greatest war of modem times. 

Like General Sherman, he repeatedly expressed 
his interest concerning the terrible experiences I had 
undergone in Southern prisons. 

^^I suppose you will want to get home as quickly 
as possible, won't you ?" he inquired, "or would you 
rather remain here awhile and look about the army ?" 
A steamer was to leave for the North in an hour. 
Privately, I was fearing a sudden break-down of my 
health, and longed for a home that I had visited 
but eight days during four long years of war. Then 
I thought of my letter to Mr. Lincoln. The General 
seemed to anticipate my thought. "Leave the 
President's letter with me," he said, "if you choose, 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 197 

and I will give it to him, or stay over and give it 
to him yourself.'' 

There was no man living I was so anxious to see 
as Abraham Lincoln. And this was my opportunity. 
But something like a premonition said, "Go home." 
When I expressed my feeling General Grant stepped 
to the door of the office room and directed General 
Rawlins to see that I be provided with leave of ab- 
sence and transportation. That little order, signed 
by Rawlins, I still possess. 

With an earnest handshake and good-by General 
Grant thanked me for bringing him the dispatches. 
I was not to see him again for many years.* 

*At the town of Lucerne in Switzerland there is in front 
of the Schweizerhof a quay lined with castanien trees. It 
overlooks the beautiful lake. Long years after the war 
General Grant sat there on a bench one quiet summer 
night and talked to me of the time I brought the news 
to him from Sherman in the Carolinas. In a few weeks 
from that night by the lakeside I had the honor of enter- 
taining my old commander at my own home, in the city of 
Zurich, where I was now representing the government as 
one of his appointees. The order naming me to go to 
Zurich had, on a certain time, been written by his own 
hand. 

This night at Zurich proved to be almost the last time 
I was ever to see the great commander. His presence and 
words that evening are among the treasured memories of 
my life. 



CHAPTEK XV 

Washington City in the last days of the war — Look, the 
President! — The last man of the regiment. 

Leaving General Grant's headquarters at Citj 
Point was for me a final good-bv to the army. The 
little steamer Martin carried me down the James 
Hiver, up the Chesapeake Bay, and the Potomac, 
toward the ^orth. I recall now the strange sensa- 
tions I had in passing Washington's tomb at Mount 
Vernon. The green slopes and the oak wood in 
front of the old mansion were in full view. I could 
even see the front columns of the house, and some- 
one on the steamer's deck pointed out to me the spot 
where stood the simple brick mausoleum where with 
folded arms slept the Father of his Country. I 
could not help reflecting that at that moment not a 
hundred miles away stood nearly all George Wash- 
ington's State's descendants, with arms in their hands, 
striving to destroy the government that he had 
founded. 

How I enjoyed that ship ride! Here there was 
no sandy prison pen with poor, straving, dying com- 

198 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 199 

rades lying around; no futile efforts at escape; no 
taunts and jeers that the American flag had gone 
down in disgrace ; now all was free and beautiful, and 
mine. The hated rag of the Confederacy that had 
floated over my head and threatened me every day 
with death for fifteen long months was gone for- 
ever. At the mast of our little vessel waved the 
Stars and Stripes, conscious, it seemed to me, of the 
free air I was breathing. That was a happy day for 
me. 

Some time in the following night the wheels of 
the boat stopped revolving — there was silence; and 
when I woke at daylight there was the land. The 
ship was fast in the slip at the wharf, and there, too, 
was the capital of the republic. I went ashore by 
myself and wandered into the city, my mind 
crowded every moment with the thoughts of what 
had taken place here in the last four years. Sol- 
diers I saw everywhere, with arms and without arms, 
l^egroes, now freedmen, by the ten thousand fairly 
darkened the population. With some friends I 
found a boarding place on the avenue above the 
[N'ational Hotel. If I wanted to see great men, 
notorious men, men making history, all kinds of 
men, I had only to step into the corridors of the 
IvTational. 

I had little or no ready money, nor could I 



200 WITH FIKE AND SWOKD 

get any until the government settled my accounts. 
I waited in Washington for a week. General Sher- 
man had given me papers that would insure my 
promotion in the regular army. I presented them; 
they were all-sufficient; I needed only to say the 
word. But I was sick and tired of war, and would 
not have exchanged a glimpse of my Western home 
for the commission of a brigadier. 

But while I stayed in Washington what sights I 
saw ! Our capital is now possibly the finest in the 
world. Then it was the most hateful; the most 
hateful in every way. Militarism, treason, political 
scoundrelism, and every other bad ism reigned in 
every hotel, on every street corner, in Congress, out 
of Congress — everywhere; reigned right at the 
elbows of loyalty and patriotism such as the world 
never saw. Society was one grand conglomeration 
of everything good and bad. 

Washington City itself was a spectacle. It had 
no streets, save one or two^ — simply dirty unpaved 
roads. The dirty street cars, pulled by worn-out 
horses, were crowded inside and outside by a mass 
of struggling politicians, soldiers, gamblers, adven- 
turers, and women. The city was also full of 
hospitals ; everywhere there were lazarettos and 
graveyards. It looked as if half the Union army 
had dragged itself into the capital to die. The 



WITH FIRE AND SWORD 201 

great Capital building was uncompleted; its dome 
stood there covered with scaffoldings and windlasses. 
The plaza at the east end of the structure looked like 
a vast stone quarry. The Washington Monument 
had only gotten itself safe above high-water mark; 
and what there was of it was in danger of falling 
down. It stood in the middle of the flats, the 
mud and the malaria — the graveyard, in short, that 
formed the unsavory prospect from the White House 
windows. 

Aside from the unfinished govermnent buildings 
there was not a pretense of architecture in all Wash- 
ington. There was nothing beautiful there. The 
very atmosphere seemed sickly; fever, malaria, were 
everywhere. It was the one city in all creation to 
get out of as soon as possible. 

Once I tried to get a glimpse of the President. 
I failed. The White House gates were held by 
sentries. ^'Why do you Avant to see that old Ape?" 
said a man to me one day. I was shocked, and 
would like to have killed him. But he was not alone 
in his vileness. Thousands in Washington affected 
to despise Lincoln. I wondered then that it was 
regarded safe for him to appear in public. One day 
a carriage rolled rapidly up the avenue in front of 
the National. I heard some men cry, ^Took, the 
President !" I glanced quickly. A tall, dark man. 



202 WITH FIKE AND SWORD 

wearing a silk hat sat in the carriage; at his side 
a ladj. 

In a moment they were out of sight. There 
was not a cheer, not a hat touched, not a hand 
waved, and yet that was Abraham Lincoln 'passing, 
soon to be the greatest man in history. A little 
wrangle and almost a fist-fight between some by- 
standers on the pavement followed; one party de- 
nouncing the President for freeing the ^^damned 
niggers'' ; another thanking God for the President's 
noble deed. Such scenes were going on everywhere 
all over the capital, pro and con. Approval and 
hatred. The best praised, the worst abused mortal 
in America was just entering on his second term at 
the White House. I never even had a glimpse of 
the kindly face again. 

At last my accounts were ready. "But your regi- 
ment," said the Assistant War Secretary, ''does not 
exist. What was left of them were all put into a 
cavalry troop long ago. You are the last man of the 
regiment." Across the face of my paper he wrote, 
^'Discharged as a supernumerary o-fficer/^ That 
paper lies before me while I write. I was paid off 
in shining greenbacks for all the time I had been in 
prison. 

As to the eighty comrades who had been captured 
with me that 25th of November in the assault on 



WITH FIRE AND SWOED 203 

Missionary Ridge, all but sixteen were dead. Nine 
of my old Company B of the Fifth Regiment were 
taken prisoners, and only one of them had survived 
the horrors of Andersonville. Poor Cartwright died 
not long after, and I alone of the little band was 
left to tell the storv. 



